


katabasis

by hiuythn



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dreams and Nightmares, Grief/Mourning, HAPPY ENDING I SAY!!!, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Really Character Death, Y'all know me, i make it hurt but i make it worth, trust me on this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22804618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiuythn/pseuds/hiuythn
Summary: Keith's jetpack malfunctions.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 175
Kudos: 1108





	1. the abduction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nomorefarewellkisses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomorefarewellkisses/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a few of you guys asked me if I was feeling okay after ‘skin hunger’ since it was so fluffy with no angst in sight, and I regret to inform u that I saved it all for this one haha whoops!
> 
> Evy hope you enjoy part 2 of your bday present pls don’t kill me luv u mwah

They don’t know how it happened.

Hunk could probably figure it out. He could disassemble the jetpack and see which wires got crossed, what came loose. He could see where it went wrong. Could tell Lance the reason why Keith’s not standing here with them.

But they don’t find Keith _(or what’s left of him)_ and they don’t find his pack.

So, they don’t know how it happened.

Here’s what they do know:

A Galra slaver ship is en route to planet Nhuir, supposedly to start a colony with some free labor.

Their mission: stop it, save the victims.

They do. They blow up fighter jets, drive the ship planetside, board it and release the prisoners.

The soldiers they leave unconscious on the decks, concussed and bruised.

Nhuir is dusty. Jagged hills of orange rock and craggy cliffs. No animals, no trees, not even a single strand of grass. Forgettable, monotonous, empty. Why the Galra wanted to establish a colony here, Lance can’t begin to guess.

But for the prisoners, this is the first time in months that they’ve been outside, and it shows. Heartbreaking relief, stunned gazes. Weak limbs and upturned faces, trembling hands.

Allura pauses in her headcount, in her plans to fit how many in which lions and who goes first and who will have to wait—she looks upon the victims and goes soft.

A couple more minutes won’t hurt, she says.

Lance immediately sets about entertaining the younger ones. He lets the kids ride on his back, cracks lame jokes, watching how every laugh pulls them further out of their shell. Shiro wanders over at some point and ends up on hair-braiding duty. Allura and Hunk are clustered with the adults, most likely gossiping by the looks of it, and Pidge and Coran are handing out emergency rations and blankets.

In these situations—in the aftermath of battles, where the saving is more up close and personal—Keith usually takes a backseat. Even now, as the forefront of Voltron. _I’m never going to be good at that part_ , he said once. _But that’s okay. I’ve got you guys._

Sometimes, he wanders away. Sometimes, he busies himself with Black’s systems or mission reports. Sometimes, he just watches, guarding them silently.

But other times, he’ll be talking quietly to a kid or a particularly shy teen, a little chat that always ends with the other leaving with an awed, pleased smile, and him with a thoughtful quirk to his mouth.

On this day, right off the bat, Keith decides to stay out of it. He flops straight onto the orange dirt by Black’s front paws and leans against the metal, helmet in his hands.

Through a gap in the bodies around him, Lance raises an eyebrow in an obvious question. Keith waves a hand—no, he’s fine. Just tired. Lance nods.

But here’s where it stops making sense:

Lance looks up from his conversation with a boy, seventeen minutes later, to find that Keith has disappeared. That isn’t odd itself; he does that often. What’s weird is that he didn’t let them know on comms.

After the first five times he ambled off because he got bored or overwhelmed or suspicious, only to land himself in a hidden Galra base, or caught in a trap, or—once, dangling from the jaws of a house-sized orangutan—Shiro laid down a ground rule that if anyone wanted to head off to explore, they had to let the team know first. And because it’s Shiro asking, Keith hasn’t forgotten to give them a heads-up since.

Here’s where it stops making sense:

Keith has disappeared. Lance should be annoyed. At the most, worried, but not too much, right, because maybe Keith was just exhausted this time; maybe he forgot. Maybe he’s sitting in Black, taking a nap in the cockpit.

But Lance isn’t annoyed, or worried.

It crashes down on him, with all the merciless indifference of the ocean waves at their strongest—he’s suddenly, inexplicably _terrified_.

He shoots to his feet. The crowd around him startles but he barely notices, frantically scanning for red armor, for a black mullet, for something to prove the feeling in his gut wrong.

_“Lance?”_ his helmet says, resting by his foot. He puts it on and hears Coran ask, _“Is something the matter? We’re about to head back.”_

“Keith—he’s gone. He didn’t say anything.”

_“He what?”_ Shiro, voice all irritated-older-brother. _“Oh, not again—”_

“I think something’s wrong.”

The crowd parts for him, but it’s barely fast enough and he almost pushes some of them out of the way. Keith’s nowhere to be seen, but the niggling thought in Lance’s head says _over there he’s over that way_ and it’s the only thing louder than the _no no nonoNO_ in his gut.

His hunch pulls him forward, mindless and insistent. He follows, hardly conscious of the team running after him.

He runs past Black, sitting dead still. Over the rough incline behind her and down the other side, dirt crumbling under his sole. There’s an outcropping to his right, reaching high into the sky. It’s the closest thing around that Keith could have decided to explore.

Lance reaches the outcropping. A glance up suggests that Keith wouldn’t have climbed it; the surface is too steep. Lance rushes to the other side, skidding around its wide, sloping base.

He stumbles, rocks and dirt slipping out from under him and he’s forced to roll. The ground levels out and he slides to a stop. He looks up, panting.

Ahead of him, the ground abruptly plunges off into the darkest, deepest chasm he’s ever seen.

And there: right by its edge, sits Keith, peering into the depths.

“Keith,” Lance breathes.

Keith jumps. He turns, blinking rapidly. “Lance, hey—”

“Dude, get away from there.” Lance scrambles towards him.

Keith rises. “Wait, there’s something you need to—”

Here’s where it stops making sense:

The earth beneath them gives way.

It’s so gentle that Lance is shocked into stillness for a long second. His stomach floats up to his throat. The horizon tilts too fast and a sickness rises in him, snapping him back to awareness.

“Fuck—” His jetpack launches him into the air, to safety. “Keith!”

“I’m here!”

Keith flies up to him, eyes wide and breathing fast. Lance grabs his arm, that unexplainable fear still rooted in his gut.

And as they hover there, taking stock of the situation, a new terror rises in him.

Below them, the chasm is growing.

The edges of it are crumbling down into the darkness, as far as Lance can see. The outcropping—that huge rock formation—it quietly shakes to pieces, pulled down into the earth. Everything is strangely muffled; moving in slow motion. Rock and dirt fall quietly, thumping dully as they hit the cliff face. They disintegrate like ash, widening the chasm inch by inch. Lance can’t see the bottom.

“What the hell?” Keith mutters.

_“Are you guys alright?”_ Allura. _“We heard something. What’s going on?”_

Lance glances around and catches sight of the team, standing far from the chasm. He releases Keith, waving both his arms above his head. The team looks small from up here.

“We’re fine,” he replies, voice catching. He coughs. “We’re okay. We just had to—don’t come any closer. The ground’s unstable.”

_“Unstable?”_

“Earthquake, I think?”

_“We don’t feel anything over here,”_ says Pidge, puzzled.

“Yeah, I don’t know, maybe it’s really localized. It’s just this chasm that’s affected.”

_“We should return to the lions,”_ says Allura. _“We need to evacuate the victims immediately.”_

Lance lifts a hand in acknowledgement. “Copy that, we’ll be right behind you—”

But behind him, something sputters, whines its last dying breaths.

Something else exhales, a surprised little noise like when you’ve been punched in the gut.

And Lance turns to find empty air where Keith should’ve been.

Here’s where it _stops_ :

Lance dives for him, that pinprick of red against orange rock, so hard to see—and how did he fall that far already? How is the distance between them growing so fast? There’s yelling in Lance’s ears—is it him? Is it Keith? Is it the team, having seen them both plummet into darkness?

He reaches for Keith. And amidst the rain of earth and soil, he can barely make out Keith reaching back, his lips parted like Lance’s name is on his tongue.

And here, make sense of how it ends:

Keith, falling too fast and too close to the cliff face, hits a ledge. He bounces. It breaks with him, into a cascade of dirt that hides his limp body, buries him under it, even as he falls further down.

Lance loses sight of him.

And now matter how loud he screams and how far down he goes, he doesn’t regain what he lost.

There, make sense of that.

Coran says, “H’wru sits at the edge of the Neurinium galaxy. The space it inhabits is incredibly dangerous. Its sun is prone to intense solar flares, and asteroids routinely pass by every year. They’ve invented a planet-wide shielding array a couple millennium ago, which is the only reason they haven’t perished.”

“Dark,” Pidge mutters.

“It’s the truth. According to records, when Zarkon found H’wru, it was still being ransacked by the elements, and he decided it would be too bothersome to harvest. Their population was diminished as well, so no labour. He left them to die out.”

Hunk frowns at that. “They’re okay now, though, right?”

“Doing better than ever. Better than most people this side of the quadrant, I might add.”

“So, the thing that could’ve been their demise actually saved them from a greater evil.”

“Precisely. Now, having heard the news of the Coalition, they’ve expressed an interest in joining us. Earlier this afternoon we received a missive from them, inviting us to H’wru to discuss specifics.”

“We’ll be arriving in a day,” Allura says. “It’ll be the usual diplomatic procedures. I don’t think I need to remind everyone of their duties during this mission?”

A chorus of ‘no, Princess.’

She stands. Then, she casts her gaze on them and a sort of hesitancy pulls at her mouth. Gathered around the dais, the team regard her curiously, patiently. Waiting on her orders.

She smooths a distracted hand over the castle’s controls. “Will you be able to pilot Black, Shiro?”

Lance’s stomach drops to his feet. Coran suddenly finds his tablet very interesting. Hunk and Pidge inhale simultaneously, and it’s almost like the room loses its air.

“…Yes.” Shiro is completely still. He clears his throat. “I’ll be fine, Princess.”

Allura nods. She’s not looking at him. “Good. Good, I—” She bites her lip and sends Coran a helpless glance.

“Right. There was…there was a report made,” Coran says. He flicks to another screen.

It’s a Coalition document. Keith’s face is on it.

Underneath, in bold red letters: MIA.

Lance lurches to his feet, head spinning. “What—”

“The Coalition,” Coran continues, resolute, “expects that there will be questions, when the people find out. This is the official report documenting the incident. We must assume H’wru has heard the news as well, and if the subject arises, we must have an answer for them.”

“Why would we need to do that?” Hunk asks, hoarse. “They wouldn’t _ask_ about something so—about _that_. They wouldn’t ask, would they?”

Coran grips his tablet. “They have the right to inquire if Voltron is fit for battle following this incident.”

Pidge is pale-faced. “You _documented_ his—incident. You…really?”

“We had to,” says Shiro.

Lance’s head whips around.

“I had to.” Shiro swallows. The muscles in his jaw twitching; he’s wound up so tight. “It was our duty, but I didn’t want to ask one of you to do it. So, it fell to me, Allura, and Coran.”

“It hasn’t even been a week,” Lance whispers. “And you guys already wrote up a _report?”_

Shiro turns away. “It’s protocol.”

“What else would you have us do, Lance?” Allura asks softly. “We can’t exactly ignore this.”

Lance clenches his fists.

What would he have them _do?_ What would he—he would have them go back to Nhuir. He would have them dig deeper and delve farther than they did, he would have them _grounded_ there until Keith was found. He would have them refuse to believe Keith was anything but alive.

He doesn’t want a report. Does not want to put what happened into writing, does not want it etched into databases—into _history_. Because that would make it real. That would reduce to it to a line in a document, a picture on a file stamped MIA, when Keith is everything but that.

Allura spreads her hands. “I would gladly spend as many hours as it takes to find him. I would. But the universe, quite literally, will not let us. They _need_ us. They need us to keep moving. In the days that we spent looking for him, the rest of the Coalition has been scrambling to cover for us.”

Lance scowls. “So our forces are so weak that they can’t handle things without Voltron for a couple of days?”

“You know just as well as I do that the rebels are still recovering from the Naxzela battle,” she says lowly. “We’re stretched thin, Lance.”

“Stretched thin—Keith is _missing_ ,” he hisses. “The leader of Voltron is gone; how’s that for ‘stretched thin?’ How do they expect us to move on? Don’t they understand what this has done to us?”

“They do,” Shiro interjects, teeth gritted, “but there are still skirmishes here and there. The Galra won’t stop—in fact, if they find out about this, they’ll only gun for us harder.”

“Then why report it?” Lance demands. “It’s in the databases now. It’s accessible, if they have someone like Pidge. If the Galra finding out is a concern, then why draw attention to it, why make it official? We could’ve kept this under wraps. We could be back on Nhuir, rescuing the _leader_ of Voltron—”

“ _I_ am the leader now!” Shiro explodes. “And if those days we spent fruitlessly searching are any indication, I’ll be the leader until I meet the same end, too!”

Lance recoils.

Immediately, regret and horror flash across Shiro’s face. He struggles to hide it.

Allura steps forward. “Shiro—”

“Don’t.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Sorry, that was—I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. I need air, excuse me.”

He turns on his heel sharply, marching out the door before anyone else can speak. The doors hiss closed, and the bridge is stiflingly silent.

Keith’s face still hovers above them. Lance can’t look at it.

Coran reaches up and swipes the hologram away. He wears an unfamiliar expression, something old and solemn, betraying all his years.

“We’re all grieving,” he begins.

“No,” says Lance instinctively, because there’s nothing to grieve. Keith’s not—he’s just out there waiting. They’ll find him.

Coran locks eyes with him. “You are,” he says firmly. “You are, Lance. Trust me when I say this. I would know.”

The team doesn’t need him to spell it out. Allura presses her lips together, a shadow passing over her face.

“This will be one of the most painful things that you will ever do.” Coran exhales, purposeful. He glances between the three of them: Hunk, Pidge, Lance. “But you have your duties. We must let grief take its course, so that we may move forward. We will use this, to push us farther.”

Lance feels his stomach churn. Coran can’t really be suggesting…?

“Are you saying—?” He laughs weakly. “Keith’s not _dead_. This isn’t grief. I’m not grieving. I’m worried, because I don’t understand why we’re going on a mission or why you’re talking about ‘moving forward’ when Keith’s waiting on us to come for him.”

The others stare.

“Lance,” Hunk says, haltingly. He’s wearing an expression Lance decides he hates. “You can’t honestly think he’s still…?”

“Alive? What, you don’t?”

Hunk flinches. “After a fall like that? I don’t see how he could be.”

Lance searches the faces of his teammates. He doesn’t like what he finds.

Resignation, sorrow, _pity._

He shakes his head, disbelieving. “You all think he’s dead.”

“It’s not like we want it to be true,” Pidge argues. “But think about it logically. We went over every part of that chasm but didn’t even find a hint of where he could’ve landed.”

“Which means he’s still alive. No body, no death.”

“This isn’t a TV show, Lance! You can’t apply those fictional rules to our reality.”

“You think I’m joking. I’m not. We just didn’t look hard enough. He’s down there waiting, I know it.”

She runs her hands through her hair, exasperated. “We spent days and nights down there. We had shifts, Lance. We used every piece of tech we had, and there was _nothing._ No body, no hint, not a single thing except for darkness and rocks and more freaking _rocks.”_

Hunk adds quietly, “And don’t you think he’d have reached out to us, if he’d been waiting?”

“Maybe he couldn’t,” says Lance. “Maybe he’s—stuck. Or lost.”

“Lance…”

“He’s not dead,” Lance says flatly. “He’s not. I’d know if he was.”

Pidge makes a frustrated noise, eyes wet. “You’d _know?_ No, you need to stop this, Lance. I didn’t want to be the one to say it, but you’re—this is ridiculous. It’s not enough that Keith’s dead—”

“Stop saying that—”

“—but now you’re refusing to even acknowledge it, and this isn’t _healthy,_ this _—”_

“He isn’t dead, Pidge!”

“This isn’t what Keith would want for you!” she cries.

Lance jabs a finger at her. “Do _not_ tell me what Keith would want. You—you wouldn’t know anything about that. You don’t know anything. _You_ think he’s gone.”

Allura steps between them. “That’s enough.”

“Princess—”

“Please, Lance,” she whispers. “Enough.”

She speaks with a catch in her throat, a rasp to her voice. She stands with a slump in her spine and a pinch between her brows. Weariness is draped over her like a threadbare shawl.

That same resignation is reflected in Hunk’s lowered gaze. In the tilt of Coran’s chin, the taut skin of Pidge’s fists.

Lance takes this all in. He sees nothing but grief.

They really have given up.

He takes a step away. Another, then another. His stomach is rolling.

“Lance…” Allura reaches for him but he jerks back, hating the furrow in her brows.

“Don’t,” he rasps. “Don’t touch me.”

He doesn’t need that. Doesn’t want that. Just being in this room with these people—these people who think Keith’s fucking _dead—_ Lance is shaking with fury. They don’t get it. They don’t get _him._

Keith would. Keith would take one look and see the fire in him and he’d _understand;_ he’s been there.

Without another word, Lance spins on his heel and leaves.

There is nothing for him here.

_This is how they don’t find him. This is how they shatter:_

_“Anything?” Coran asks, when they walk through the doors. He rushes up to them, eyes darting from one face to another. “Did you find him?”_

_Shiro’s bowed head dips down. His shoulders rise, the muscles bunching up around his neck._

_Coran stares at him, almost confused. He looks wordlessly at Allura._

_She shakes her head jerkily. When she blinks, a tear runs down her cheek._

_“No,” Coran whispers. He steps back. “No, he—”_

_Pidge breaks first._

_“There was nothing there,” she gasps. She shoves her hands under her glasses and curls in on herself. “We found_ nothing _.”_

_Allura gathers Pidge into her arms. Guides Pidge’s head to her neck and lets her muffle her cries there._

_Hunk walks away, over to his station, where he sits with his head in his hands._

_Shiro doesn’t move._

_“Nothing?” asks Coran, and he’s so, so pale. “Truly?”_

_“Not a thing,” Allura whispers. “Even the wreckage of the battle—all of it, everything—gone. If he—if he’s down there, he’s too far to reach.”_

_Shiro whines low in his throat, a sound so painful that it makes Pidge sob harder._

_“I can’t—” Shiro grasps out blindly, and Lance meets him halfway. Coran closes in on his other side, and together, the three of them drop to the floor._

_“Easy,” says Coran. “Easy there.” But he’s trembling just as hard._

_“Keith,” rips its way out of Shiro, guttural and grieving. “He’s—”_

_Lance just holds him tighter, willing him not to speak. Please, he thinks,_ please _, I can’t handle this._

_Here is Takashi Shirogane, former Black Paladin of Voltron, undefeated Champion of the Galra Empire, Commander of the Galaxy Garrison. Here is Shiro, older beyond his years, laid lower than Lance has ever seen him._

_I don’t want to see this, he thinks. Begs. Please make this stop._

_But Shiro, staring sightlessly ahead, chokes out—_

_“He’s my little_ brother _.”_

_—and that is how they spiral._

_That is how Lance is a witness to a fracture he isn’t equipped to fix._

_Bang. Bang. Bang, bang, bangbangbang—_

The gun clicks—empty.

He lowers his arm and flicks the safety on. He swipes at the screen beside him to recall the targets. They all come back with the same hole in their head.

He pulls off his protective gear and moves to a table on the side. An open case lays there, along with some cleaning tools and fluids. With practiced motions, he disassembles the gun and cleans it. He places the parts before him, decisive, gentle. When he’s done, he stands there for a bit, eyes roving over it.

Alteans don’t have projectile weapons. Most warp-capable species don’t. Using this in a fight would be a handicap. But this gun isn’t meant for battle. Not in space, at least.

This gun was a present.

From Keith.

_“Happy birthday.”_

_“You…you got me a weapon. For my birthday. I—are these_ bullets _?”_

_“What, was I supposed to get you the gun but not the ammo? That’d be useless.”_

_“That’s, uh, really not the problem, here. Where’d you even get this? We’re nowhere near Earth.”_

_“Unilu markets. Saw it while we were looking for something else and thought it’d be a—I don’t know, reminder of Earth? You and Pidge were really excited last time you saw Earth stuff.”_

_“Yeah, but that was…actually, you know what? I kind of dig it.”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“Mhm. Pretty thoughtful of you, samurai.”_

_“I’m glad. But, uh, do me a favor? Don’t tell Shiro what I got you, he’ll scold us both.”_

Lance was really looking forward to what Keith would come up with, next year.

The gun and all its parts get packed back into a case. The case will go in the drawer by his bed, next to the diminishing supply of ammunition, next to a single fingerless glove and a worn hair tie.

Everything that he has of Keith, in one drawer, with room to spare.

The door to the firing range slides open.

Allura stands in the doorway. She says, “Hi, Lance.”

He greets her back. The words fall from his lips like molasses, like rust.

“Are you busy?” she asks.

“No. Just finished, actually.”

She steps into the room. Her dress flutters around her legs. It whispers against the floor. “I wanted to apologize.”

He goes back to the case. “Don’t tell me you tried to milk Kaltenecker on your own and scared her again. I told you I don’t mind doing—”

“It’s not that,” Allura interjects. She smooths her hands over her skirts, gaze lowered. “It’s about—about the report. You were so upset, and I—we shouldn’t have brought it up so suddenly. I’m sorry, Lance.”

He closes the case. Snaps the locks shut and runs his thumbs along the seam.

When he doesn’t reply, she continues, hesitant. “And I wanted to check in. See if you were…”

“Doing better?” Lance finishes for her. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

But the Princess is nothing if not persistent. She steps up beside him. He can feel her staring. It prickles at his cheek; he resists the urge to smear a palm over it. His spine buzzes. He blinks hard, once, and exhales.

“I know you were close,” she begins.

“Allura.”

“I know—” She bites her lip. “You two were something else to each other, and—”

_“Allura,”_ he says sharply.

Her mouth snaps shut, like the case of his gun, and she ducks her head. They stand next to each other, frozen. Unable to move away, unable to look at each other. Lance struggles to bite down on the stone in his throat. Allura has her fingers twisted together, nails sinking into her knuckles.

He takes the handle of the case and slides it off the table. He turns, shoulder brushing against hers.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

The targets he used are still hanging in his firing lane. He walks over, taps at the screen. They blink out of existence.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says to the empty lane.

When he leaves, she doesn’t follow.

Halfway down the corridor, Lance slams a fist to the wall. He hunches over, clinging to the bulkhead, mouth pressed tight. After a moment, he straightens up.

He takes a step. Takes another. And another, and another, and yet another, into the gloom of the castle.

That night, he dreams.

_A Galra slaver ship is en route to planet Nhuir. Their mission: stop it. They do. They blow up fighter jets, drive the ship planetside, board it and release the prisoners who tremble and Allura pauses. A couple more minutes won’t hurt._

_Seventeen minutes later—_

_~~no, that’s wrong.~~ _

_Eight minutes later, Lance looks up from his conversation with a boy to find that Keith has—_

_~~disappeared.~~ _

_—nodded off._

_~~but he didn’t. he’s gone. find him find himfindhim—~~ _

_He’s leaned against Black’s paw. Arms crossed, chin to his chest, hair ruffling with every breath._

_Fondness presses up against Lance’s rib cage. He listens to the little boy with half his focus, the other half on cataloging whatever scrapes and injuries he can see on Keith._

_The boy runs off soon after, attention caught by the crown of braids Shiro’s weaved on another child. Lance takes that chance to check up on his leader. He ambles over to Keith, picking up a stick on the way. He pokes Keith’s foot with it, knowing better than to get too close. Sure enough, Keith jerks, as if to lash out. His hand goes immediately to his bayard._

_“Just me,” says Lance. “You fell asleep.”_

_Keith squints blearily at him, then relaxes. He rubs his eyes. “How long?”_

_“Couple minutes.”_

_“You need me?”_

_“Always,” Lance quips. He looks around. “But nah. I think we’re about done here.”_

_“Sorry I slept through it.” Keith sighs. “Not very professional, I know.”_

_“I won’t tell Shiro,” Lance promises. He sits down, cross-legged and facing Keith. “Are those designer?”_

_“What?”_

_He brushes a finger under Keith’s eye. “These bags right here.”_

_Keith huffs a laugh. “Seriously?”_

_“You like my jokes, don’t play.”_

_“I don’t remember ever admitting to that.”_

_Lance shoves at Keith’s knee, and Keith drops his leg onto his lap in retaliation. Their armor smacks together and Lance winces. His hands settle on top of Keith’s shin reflexively._

_“Hah, wrong move,” he says. “Now I have your leg hostage.”_

_“Oh no,” says Keith. “How horrible.”_

_“Tell me what’s keeping you up or I’ll never let go.”_

_Keith shifts into a more comfortable position. It leaves Lance kind of between his legs, one of them stretched over Lance’s thigh, brushing his right side. The other lies flat on the ground, foot against Lance’s left hip._

_“Just busy, that’s all,” says Keith. “Kolivan’s got me on more missions recently.”_

_“The Blade must be stretched thin to call on Voltron’s leader.”_

_Keith’s eyes have slipped closed, but he peeps one open now. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not leaving again.”_

_Lance grunts. “Didn’t say you would.”_

_“C’mon. You think I can’t read you after all this time?”_

_He looks away, face warm. “You should let Shiro pilot Black to the castle. You can ride with me.”_

_Keith tilts his head. His hair curls over his cheeks; he needs a haircut. “The flight back takes like two minutes.”_

_“Just saying. If you’re too wiped.” Lance shoots him a mischievous grin. “I could even carry you to your room if you wanted.”_

_Keith doesn’t roll his eyes like Lance expects him to. Instead, an odd look passes over his features. “If I wanted, huh?”_

_“Yeah. You know I give Pidge piggy-back rides all the time.”_

_“So if I said I wanted something,” Keith says quietly, “you’d give it to me? Just like that?”_

_Lance stills, feeling the change in the air. “I…”_

_Keith watches him for a long moment. He glances over Lance’s shoulder and then scoots forward, slow, until his knees are bracketing Lance._

_Lance doesn’t dare breathe._

_“Would you?” he asks again. Lance catches himself straining forward and something close to satisfaction darkens Keith’s eyes. “Huh.”_

_Lance swallows. “Keith, what…?”_

_But Keith only smiles. He puts a hand to Lance’s jaw, leans in, and murmurs, “Stop me if you don’t want this.”_

_And Lance—_

_Lance does, in fact,_ want _._

_He lets his eyes fall shut._

When he blinks them open, all that greets him is the sight of his bedroom ceiling.

“You’re not hungry, Lance?”

He lifts his head.

Hunk stares back, eyes round and sad. He asks his question, softer. Lance glances around; the team is staring. Stop looking, he wants to hiss. Stop it.

He suffocates that urge back into his chest. He swallows the food in his mouth.

“Guess not,” he replies.

Speaking is hard. Speaking is slow. He can’t seem to remember how sounds should feel against his teeth. How the air should pass through his lungs, around his tongue.

“It’s your favourite,” says Hunk.

“It’s good.”

“But you’re not going to finish it?”

Lance looks at his plate. He rolls his fork between his fingers.

“You haven’t been eating.” Hunk speaks so quietly. He speaks like he’s waiting for a command to stop. He doesn’t speak like Hunk. This food doesn’t taste like Hunk’s. “I wanted…I thought I could help.”

Lance gives him a smile. Hunk flinches. “I’ll wrap it up for tomorrow. Sorry, Hunk.”

He pushes his chair back and stands. The kitchen is eleven paces away. He counts them in his head, plate cradled carefully in his palms. The thud of his boots is a backdrop to his heartbeat. No one calls out to him. He walks the length of the table, passes his friends one by one, and pays no attention to their bowed heads. Their tired eyes and limp postures.

Of course, he’s not hungry. How could he be, in a room like that? At a table like that?

With an empty seat next to his like that?

Twelve.

There are twelve steps between his room and Keith’s. There is a hallway, a ceiling, a floor. There is air and there is dust and that is all that separates them.

Every day, Lance leaves his room and the first thing he sees is that door. He used to catch Keith on his way back from an early workout. On rare days, Keith would sleep in late, and they’d walk to breakfast together. Somehow, Lance would always find that door halfway open, or halfway to closing, depending on your view.

These days, they stay shut.

These days, Lance takes those twelve steps. Every day, like a ritual. He crosses a hall, a ceiling, and a floor. Breathes dust and stale air and ends up at Keith’s door.

These days, when he knocks, no one’s ever home.

“Why didn’t you save him?” Lance asks.

Black sits motionless before him. She towers over all the others, effortlessly cold. Her shadow falls over Red, who sits with his head bowed, the glint in his eyes absent.

“I can’t figure it out,” Lance continues. “He was right there. You were right there. I get that Red didn’t, since he’s mine now, but you…you could’ve.”

She doesn’t respond. He pushes off the doorway and walks further into the loading bay. “And don’t tell me you couldn’t—how many times has Red saved Keith’s ass? Aren’t you supposed to be quicker? Better? Aren’t you and your paladin—whoever they are—supposed to have a strong bond?”

“Tell me,” he says, head tipped all the way back, standing at the feet of the Black Lion. “Why didn’t you save him?”

She doesn’t answer, of course. Her yellow eyes are five shades too bright to be anything like the Galra, but for a second, Lance hates them just the same.

_“Why didn’t you save him?”_ he screams, words echoing in the silence, slamming against the walls, against the cold exterior of the lions.

Fire licks up Lance’s throat. He’s furious, he’s burning. Right there, he thinks, she was _right fucking there._

He kicks Black’s paw. Kicks it again. “You had _every_ chance—every chance to save him!”

Slam. “You could’ve snapped him up in your jaws—”

Slam. “You could’ve used your weapons to vaporize the debris—”

Slam. “You could’ve gotten there before me, could’ve stopped him from leaving in the first place, so _why didn’t you?!”_

_SLAM._

He bends, hands to his knees, breathing hard. The loading bay fills with his ragged gasps, choked curses.

He wishes he had his bayard. He wishes the lions were weak enough to punch holes through. He wishes he’d never heard of Voltron.

He wishes there was a hand on his shoulder, a warm voice in his ear, an arm shyly pressed to his. He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to be someplace else—any place else, as long as Keith is there.

His body pulls him to the floor. He kneels, his head to Black’s paw.

“Didn’t you want to save him?”

“Didn’t you love him, too?”

_A Galra slaver ship is en route to planet Nhuir. Their mission: stop it. They—_

_~~—do. They blow up fighter jets, drive the ship planetside, board it and release the prisoners and Allura pauses; a couple more minutes won’t hur—~~ _

_~~no, that’s not right.~~ _

_A Galra slaver ship is en route to planet Nhuir. Their mission: stop it._

_They don’t get to._

_The slaver ship crashes on Nhuir._

_Lance looks up from—_

_~~his conversation with a boy to find that Keith has~~ _

_~~disappeared?~~ _

_~~nodded off?~~ _

_Lance looks up, ~~seventeen no eight no~~ eleven minutes into battle with a squadron of fighter jets, just in time to witness the slaver ship slam into the planet and detonate. _

_He gapes at the plumes of its red-orange explosion._

_What the fuck?_

_His comms buzz. “Did everyone just see that?” Hunk. “Did they just—?”_

_Keith cuts in, voice tight, alarmed. “Coran, run scans. Survivors, any of them, crew or prisoner. Paladins, finish up here. I want us down there_ now. _Allura, can you—”_

_“Already on it.” Blue flashes by, ice cannon powering up._

_Lance rips a jet in half and follows. The rest of the team catch up within seconds._

_“The jets were unmanned,” says Pidge._

_Lance noticed that, too. The fight had been eerily calm, smooth and untroubled—characteristic of AI-piloted jets. Still difficult, but more like a complicated simulation than a real fight._

_Had they been a distraction? For what? A murder-suicide? It doesn’t make sense._

_“Did they just send those out and then decide to nose-dive to their deaths?” he mutters. Nobody has an answer for him._

_When they arrive at the wreckage, Blue has frozen the worst of the fires. The lions hover around it at a distance. The earth is scorched. The ship lies in blackened pieces. Lance’s stomach churns._

_“Coran, you got anything?” asks Keith._

_“Scans show no signs of life. No crew and—no prisoners,” Coran confirms haltingly._

_A heavy silence settles over the team. Lance clenches his jaw. The mission briefing had estimated thirty-something prisoners. There had even been a few kids._

_Voltron was too late._

_Coran clears his throat. “Although, what’s odd is that the scans for biorhythms came up_ completely _blank. That means no plants, no bacteria. Not even a mouse. Effectively, we’re looking at a dead planet.”_

_“That can’t be right,” says Allura. “Why would the Galra decide to colonize a dead planet?”_

_“Perhaps there’s something wrong with the castle sensors?”_

_“Hold on, I’m coming back to the castle; let me take a look.”_

_“Hunk, Pidge, go with her,” Keith orders. “Lance and I will search on foot, just in case.”_

_The team splits, three rocketing back into space while Black and Red land by what looks to be the main body of the ship._

_Keith meets him outside, visor locked in and sword in hand. Like Lance, he’s strapped an emergency medpack to his waist. Bandages, blood restoratives, a couple capsules that expand into stasis pods—it’s got everything._

_Keith’s staring at a spot to the left of the crash site. Lance follows his line of sight to a crack in the earth—a chasm. A_ large _one. Wide enough that it has him wondering how deep it goes._

_“Ready?” he asks Keith._

_Keith blinks. He visibly refocuses, locking onto Lance with a foreign look in his eyes. He blinks again and its gone. “Yeah, let’s go.”_

_Keith takes point. He jogs into the smoking hull of the ship and immediately calls out for survivors. Lance watches his back, gun up and set to stun._

_As they make their way through the wreckage, it becomes hopelessly clear that nothing could have survived this._

_The ship has been reduced to nothing but debris, more than half its body gone up in flames; if the ship couldn’t keep itself together, it’s hard to see how anything else could._

_Multiple times, Lance wonders: is that charred thing there a pipe or a leg? Did he just step in oil or blood?_

_At one point, Keith asks him if he said something. He says no and Keith frowns._

_Shiro comms them twenty-five minutes later. Asks if they found anything. They say no. He tells them to return._

_When they arrive on the bridge, Allura is stationed on the dais, diagnostic screens like a shield around her._

_She pushes her hair away from her face makes a disbelieving noise. “That is so_ odd; _the systems are working perfectly. There must really be nothing down there. Hunk? Pidge? Anything?”_

_Hunk pops out from behind his station, circuitry tangled in his gloved hands. Coran winces at the sight. “Nope. Tried boosting the sensors. Still reading as a dead planet. Also, uh, also no sign of survivors.”_

_“Nothing on my end either,” Pidge mutters. She flops back against her seat, arms crossed, glaring at her laptop. “We should’ve scanned the slaver ship when we came into contact. Maybe there was nobody on there to begin with.”_

_“It would explain why the ship fell to Nhuir like its bridge crew had all decided to take a nap at their stations,” Shiro adds. He scrubs his head. “Honestly, unlikely as it is, I do hope it was empty. Those prisoners…”_

_As the team falls into a discussion, Lance sidles up to Keith._

_“See something?”_

_Keith startles. He turns away from the windows. “What?”_

_Lance jerks his chin to the view. “The planet. You’ve been staring at it.”_

_“Oh. No, I—just confused, I guess.”_

_“It is kind of weird, yeah. Crashing into the planet like that. I can’t make sense of it.”_

_Keith shakes his head. “No, that’s not—you can’t hear it?”_

_“Hear what?”_

_“It’s so loud,” he continues, almost to himself. “It’s down there.”_

_Lance frowns. “Dude, you’re not making any sense—did you see someone?”_

_“No,” Keith mumbles. “No, it’s…”_

_Allura claps her hands. Lance jumps._

_“Alright, listen up. We lost today. Lives were taken too soon and it’s—it’s heavy beyond words.” She pauses, gaze falling for a second before she raises her head high. “But we couldn’t have predicted this. We’ve done all we could.”_

_The team nods slowly, reluctantly, but the Princess is right. There’s no use regretting, when there are always more in need of saving._

_“I’ve updated our allies on the situation,” she continues. “But for now, our next mission is to…”_

_Lance allows her voice to fade into the background. Beside him, Keith is silent and still. That glaze has slid over his face again, and his head is cocked towards the windows, as if he’s straining to hear something._

_Lance nudges him. “You okay?”_

_It takes a long moment for him to respond. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “Yeah, I’m fine.”_

_But his distant expression only recedes when they leave that star system behind, and when Lance asks him later about whatever it was that he heard, there’s no recognition in his eyes._

Lance jerks awake.

The blankets are tangled around his legs. He kicks them off and sits up. He scrubs a hand over his face. Drags it through his sweat-matted hair.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ —another one?

A bark of laughter leaves him. His mind wants to play tricks on him now, huh? Wants to dangle hypotheticals before him like bait, huh? You could’ve had this, you could’ve dodged this, you could’ve, should’ve, would’ve.

Because it isn’t enough that every waking moment is a nightmare, right? He has to deal with this shit in his sleep, too.

His nails bite into his scalp. “Shit,” he whispers. “Fucking— _shit._ ”

He throws the covers back.

The bot spins on its foot, lashing out with a high kick and following up with a slash of its sword.

Lance blocks it, grunting underneath the force of the attack. His broadsword shakes in his grip. His bare palms sting. Should’ve worn gloves—

He grits his teeth and twists his wrist, driving the bot’s blade into the floor. His leg comes flying up, boot cracking against the bot’s neck. It stumbles but manages to grab his ankle and toss him away. He rolls with it. He swings his arm up instinctively as he recovers and the attack that would’ve taken off his shoulder deflects harmlessly off his blade.

He sweeps out with a leg, pain lancing up his shin when it connects and the bot stumbles.

An opening.

Reality slows. Blood pounds in his ears. His breaths come heavy, thundering, as he forces himself to get up, stand up, _move dammit!_

His foot comes down, bracing against the floor, and with a hoarse shout, Lance thrusts his blade through the training bot’s stomach.

A _clank_ reverberates through the room as the bot’s weapon hits the floor. Lance pants, muscles straining to keep him upright.

The bot crumples over him, strings cut. Its head falls to his shoulder.

He stares at fixed point on the far wall and waits as it disintegrates back into the system, until it’s nothing but a fading shimmer of blue.

_“Simulation complete,”_ announces the system.

He straightens, wiping at his brow. His vision blurs; he blinks. “Run the next one.”

_“Session has reached time limit. Please wait until the next cycle.”_

“Paladin override. Run the next one.”

_“Unable to comply. Please wait until the next cycle.”_

Lance throws his sword to the floor and swears. He rubs a hand over his face, gritting his teeth. It’s fine. He picks up his bayard. He’ll just go use one of the other six training rooms.

He turns to the door, intending to do just that, only to find Coran standing there. Great.

“Good morning, Lance.”

“Morning,” he replies, curt. “Did something come up?”

“Not quite.” Coran takes measured steps into the room, a pile of datapads in his arms. There are circles under his eyes. “It’s rather early for you to be in here. How long have you been up?”

The sweat is drying on Lance’s skin; his skin crawls. Hostility bubbles up under his tongue. He wants to tell Coran to drop it, to leave him the fuck alone. He could, and Coran would, but he didn’t spend all that time listening to Coran ramble about his home and telling Coran about his own, just to lash out at the man like that.

Lance takes a deep breath, glancing away. “A while. Couldn’t sleep, ‘s all.”

“I see.” Coran looks around the room. Lance doesn’t acknowledge the way his eyes dim, as if he’d failed to find what he was searching for. “Well, you should be heading to breakfast then.”

“Sure.”

Coran’s mouth quirks up, a pitiful attempt to smile. “Lance, you do know I can tell when you lie, yes?”

Lance just shrugs jerkily, jaw tense. Just leave, he thinks. Leave, leave, leave me alone.

Coran’s expression falls when Lance says nothing. He nods. “Alright. I’ll see you later, then.”

Lance waits by the door, listening to his footsteps fade down the hall. Only when he’s sure they’re gone does he leave for the next training room. He beats down a dozen bots, the image of Coran’s retreating figure hovering at the forefront of his mind. The back of his normally immaculate uniform had been wrinkled; the sleeves stained.

When Lance finally slinks into the dining room two hours later, everyone has already left.

That night, he sleeps soundlessly, too worn out to expend energy fabricating what-ifs to torture himself with. He wakes with an idea.

It doesn’t sound the healthiest; training until you pass out. But what else can he do?

_~~fly off, find Keith, fuck everything else—~~ _

This is all that he is allowed.

Lance wonders if this is how Keith felt. Wonders if this is how he coped with his father, his mother, and his brother, dying and leaving and disappearing. Lance can understand; with adrenaline on his tongue, there’s little room to consider much else. With a sharp blade in his hand, his thoughts cannot stray any further than the distance between him and a training bot.

For the rest of the week and moving into the next, he trains like a man possessed, avoiding his team with dogged persistence. If he hears them coming, he walks the other way. Outside of Voltron business, he’s a ghost. A presence you couldn’t pick out from a line of inanimate objects.

He exists in a space entirely his own, creates a reality where it’s just him and his bayard. Him and a bot and a room, where time blurs and nothing can touch him. Nothing else matters, except exhausting himself so fully that he retains nothing at night. Things are a little less real, and it’s—almost better. Like this, it’s almost too easy to trick himself. Nothing has happened. Nothing will happen. And whenever he’s exhausted his time limits, he ventures into abandoned rooms, deep in the bowels of the castleship, and stands there for hours, watching his breath fog in the chill of the room.

It’s a limbo of his own making.

And it works.

For a short while.

_~~AGalraslavershipisenroutetoplanetNhuir—~~ _

_~~Theyblowupfighterjetsdrivetheshipplanetsideboarditandreleasethe—~~ _

_~~NhuirisdustyNhuirisjaggedhillsoforangerockandcraggycliffsNoanimalsnotreesnotevenasinglestrandof—~~ _

_~~TheprisonersarestunnedweaklimbedandtremblingAllurapauses;acouplemoreminuteswon’thurt—~~ _

_~~KeithflopsstraightontotheorangedirtbyBlack’sfrontpaws—~~ _

_~~SeventeenminuteslaterLancelooksupand—~~ _

_~~Lanceisrunningandslidingandskiddingandrollingandaheadofhimthegroundgiveswayto—~~ _

_Keith is crouching by the edge of the chasm._

_Lance’s hand shoots out, grabs the collar of Keith’s suit and hauls him back, practically throwing him to the ground at Lance’s feet._

_Keith blinks up at him, limbs akimbo. “Lance?”_

_That sound, that voice—it’s real audible proof that the idiot is actually sprawled there on the dirt. Lance’s legs give out under him. He crumples to his knees. A bark of laughter punches its way out of his throat. Keith is still frowning at him, confused._

_“What the hell,” Lance croaks, “were you doing?”_

_Keith cocks his head. “What?”_

_Lance takes a few calming breaths. ~~Whywashesoscaredwhy—~~ “You were sitting on a cliff like it was lawn chair.”_

_“I had my jetpack,” Keith replies, like that makes everything better._

_“You didn’t let us know,” Lance says slowly, like he’s talking to a child. “You’re supposed to let us know.”_

_The blood drains from Keith’s face. “Oh shit. I forgot. Shiro’s going to kill me.”_

_“Not before I do,” Hunk says, emerging from behind the outcropping, followed closely by the rest of the team._

_“Get in line,” Lance says. “I found him first.”_

_“What was so interesting,” Shiro demands, “that you had to give us all heart attacks like that?”_

_“Um,” says Keith, “don’t you think this is a bit much?”_

_“The last time you went off on you own, you single-handedly brought down two ancient temples and an entire governing system,” Allura says flatly. “You will excuse us if we find your absence a cause for concern.”_

_Keith stares at them, all wide-eyed and sheepish. “R-right. I’m sorry. There was—I thought I heard someone down there.”_

_Coran frowns. “Is there?”_

_Keith shrugs. He stands, brushing the dirt from his legs and hands. “I couldn’t see far down enough. It’s too dark.”_

_“Too dark?” Lance leans over, peering into the chasm._

_Once, they got to see the planet Shiro and Keith were stranded on during that whole wormhole malfunction thing, and the canyon that Keith said he had to jump._

_This one is a hundred times more intimidating._

_Lance shudders. “Let’s head back,” he says. The team mumble their agreement, sending uneasy looks at the cliff._

_Moments after their departure, the chasm collapses in on itself. Something loosens in Lance’s stomach._

_When they’re back at the castle, they receive a subspace call from the Olkari and Slav. Something about a project or other. The conversation goes on for a while and Lance only tunes back in when Allura offhandedly mentions the chasm halfway through._

_Slav’s face goes blank. “An earthquake? Planet Nhuir, you say?”_

_Allura blinks, thrown by his sudden solemnity. “Yes.”_

_After a beat, he says, “You’re very lucky.”_

_And surely, it’s a statement meant for all of them, Lance thinks. They were all on that cliff._

_But Slav’s eyes are on Keith, and Lance doesn’t want to think about what that means._

It’s just a dream.

Just dreams, all of them, useless wants and wishes. It shouldn’t mean anything. It _can’t_. But it persists, the memory of Slav’s gaze fixed on Keith. It won’t leave Lance alone, it makes him wonder, makes him obsessed and crazed. He begins to think too much about—about the possibilities. Cracks start to splinter through the numbness. He can’t have that happen. He has a routine, a method. If these thoughts don’t leave, he might just drown.

“Multiple realities,” says Lance. “You said they exist. How do you know what happens in them? How do you see it?”

Slav’s projection regards him with an unreadable expression. “What’s this about, Paladin?”

Lance pushes away from his station, dragging a hand through his limp hair. He needs a shower. He’s needed one for a while. His face is grimy.

“I…I’ve been having these dreams,” he begins.

“What about?” asks Slav. Something in his posture says he already knows.

Lance stares hard out the bridge’s windows. The stars spiral past dizzyingly. A muscle in his jaw jumps. Through gritted teeth, he tells Slav of his dreams. How they all start out the same but end in different ways, different paths. How they seem so _vivid_ , so undeniable, until it’s over. And how, in the last one, Slav himself had alluded that they might all be _real_.

“But they’re not,” says Lance, “right? Alternate realities; they can’t—they can’t be real. It’s all theoretical, isn’t it? When you say—when you talk about them, it’s not for sure.”

He says it like a statement. Means it like a question. Whispers it like a prayer.

Slav looks conflicted.

“Please,” Lance whispers. “I need to know.”

For once, Slav is subdued, as he explains the probabilities and the math, the logic behind predicting and prophesying. Of the line that blurs the two.

It sounds ridiculous, far-fetched, _laughable_.

But this is a world of aliens. Of outlandish technological advances, of glowing weaponized prosthetics, of shape-shifting princesses and sentient robots and motherfucking _witches_ —and suddenly a little future-telling seems reasonable in comparison.

Suddenly, it seems possible.

What the _fuck_ is Lance supposed to do with this knowledge?

He sits at his station with his head in his hands, shaking. Slav says something, but his ears are ringing, static buzzing, whining radio waves—what the _fuck_ is he supposed to think? Huh?

How is he supposed to feel about the multiple Lances out there, living lives just a shade away from his, indiscernible except for the little things? Like the colour of his eyes, the grain of his hair, or the fact that some version of him is lucky enough to succeed where he failed. Great. That’s just—fucking great.

It would just be his luck, to have his reality be the one where Keith doesn’t make it.

He wants to reach in between the fabric of time and space. Wants to fist a hand in those other Lances’ shirt and demand. How did they do it? How did they manage to be what he couldn’t be? Stable, happy, and whole. Quicker with their reflexes, quicker to hold on, quicker to love.

“I am sorry,” Slav says quietly.

Lance curls over his knees.

“So am I,” he whispers.

“So am I.”

He is listless. For days, he does nothing. Doesn’t train, doesn’t sleep, and just barely manages to eat. He still needs a shower. What does it matter though, with his self-imposed exile? No one’s allowed close enough to care whether he stinks. He sure doesn’t.

Sometimes, the grumble in his stomach and the smell of his own sweat is all that reminds him that he’s still alive.

On the next mission, Lance goes off on his own.

Infiltration, information gathering, get in and get out, the usual. It’s routine by now, muscle memory, to shoot and scan and stand guard as Pidge and Hunk rip open a bot or a console.

This is dangerous, he thinks idly. Foggy memories of lessons back at the Garrison: unfit for duty, PTSD.

How safe are Pidge and Hunk, with a sniper at their back that dreams of a dead man? How sharp are Lance’s senses?

He shrugs the thoughts off. It doesn’t matter. He’ll do his job. He can manage that much.

_~~what if he fails here, too?~~ _

_~~what if it’s Pidge’s small frame that falls next?~~ _

_~~what if it’s Hunk? Shiro? Allura? Coran?~~ _

_~~would they be safer without him?~~ _

They’ve got a couple terabytes of data left to steal when Lance catches sight of a lone galra soldier on surveillance.

They’re trying to sneak through the base, hesitating at the bodies strewn around the corridors. Lance watches them for a moment.

They walk with their head ducked, shoulders up, and Lance is hit with double vision. He _sees_ himself in the clumsy way they hold their blaster. He sees sixteen-year-old Lance, sees an unburdened, unknowing Lance. That Lance hasn’t suffocated under war. Hasn’t lost a damn thing. That Lance is lucky.

The soldier steps around a fallen comrade, pausing to brush a hand over the eyelids to close them, and Lance _chokes_ on his rage.

He spins on his heel.

Behind him, Pidge calls out, Hunk’s footsteps following, pausing, stopping. He always used to follow, Lance recalls.

“Where are you going?” Pidge asks. She sounds so young these days.

“Lance,” whispers Hunk. Whispers. Fucking _whispers_ —a guy that strong shouldn’t fucking whisper. Lance hates it. Where did his tree-trunk of a friend go? Diary-reading, snappy-mouthed brother-in-arms—reduced to this.

“Just finishing off a straggler,” he replies shortly. “You’ll be fine. I’ll come back.”

“We’re supposed to stick together,” says Pidge.

He snorts. The doors hiss shut behind him.

He finds the soldier hunched behind an overturned crate. Probably heard him coming; he didn’t exactly make it a secret, footsteps loud and sure in the chilling silence. He approaches the crate, wondering how old this one is. How young is Zarkon recruiting? How low is he willing to stoop?

The tip of the soldier’s helmet peeks out from the crate. God, this one’s _new_ new. Did no one teach them to hide properly?

“I can see you,” says Lance. “Throw your weapon to me and I’ll just tie you up.”

The soldier doesn’t respond. Lance listens, but the kid doesn’t cock their blaster, doesn’t move, or even seem to breathe. Frozen solid with fear, huh.

“How old are you?” he asks.

The crate is silent.

Lance takes one step.

A blaster whips around the corner and goes off. The shot goes _wide_ , so wide it’s not even in the same stratosphere as Lance.

Lance lifts his gun and fires. The soldier’s weapon goes flying and a surprised noise echoes through the corridor. There’s a moment—and Lance can physically feel them thinking through their options—before the soldier stumbles to their feet, rising behind the crate on stick-thin legs.

Just looking at them makes Lance sick. Who put this child on the front lines?

He can’t see their eyes behind their helmet, but the trembling line of their lips is enough.

“Surrender,” says Lance, so, so tired. So sick of this shit.

The kid visibly pulls the remaining shreds of their courage together. “V-victory or death.”

Lance’s lips quirk up reluctantly. “Yeah,” he exhales, “that’s what I thought you’d say.”

He aims, fires.

The wire holding up a loose ceiling panel snaps and the metal sheet slams into the soldier’s helmet, knocking them right out.

Lance ties their hands and feet together. He hauls them over his shoulder and drops them outside the base.

He stands over them. The grass sways over their form and brushes Lance’s shins. He even left some dead guy’s knife next to the kid, to cut through the restraints. They’ll be fine. They’ll learn a lesson. Maybe they’ll even desert this fucking war. Maybe they’ll find some shame, some morals, and do their best to help out on the other side.

Or maybe they’ll be selfish, be smart, and just fuck off like Lance should’ve. Maybe they’ll escape, find a place to live and love without ever having to deal with losing.

Maybe.

Lance turns back to the base.

Pidge and Hunk don’t try to talk to him about the mission. He wonders if they watched through the cameras. Wonders what they think of him. Is he still the same Lance? Or is he a stranger, in the same ways they are to him? Does their skin itch and shiver when they look at him?

It’s like a dam breaking.

Lance finds himself wandering off during missions. He flies out farther during battles, chasing after fighter jets and ignoring the cries of his team in his ear. He explores bases by himself, gets himself roughed up and gives back twice as good. He fights with a gun, with a sword, switches between the two like it’ll make up for the absence at his back; that glaring weakness.

And he’s _fine_. He gets back in one piece, objectives accomplished every time, and he’s not a wet-behind-the-ears cadet, but—

But sometimes, you just fucking mess up.

Lance messes up.

Or rather, he’s caught off guard, just a second of inattention. His vision greys out, and maybe it’s because he hasn’t eaten anything the whole day, maybe it’s the lack of sleep, the lethargy in his bones. But he messes up and gets a broken rib for it, courtesy of a Galra’s vicious roundhouse kick.

It’s _fine_. He still knocks them out cold, though Red has to do most of the flying back to the castle.

Predictably, the team flips their shit. They shove him into a pod and when he gets out, he endures a whole hour of wobbly voices and stern frowns and every shade of concerned that you could possibly experience. He sits and he lets it wash over him. What can they do, realistically? They can’t afford to bench him for recklessness. Not when it’s just his own body he’s endangering. Not when it’s just the five of them now, plus Coran. Just five paladins.

They don’t have a stand-in anymore.

Lance knows they can’t do shit. They know it, too.

Princess Allura bites her lip, gaze flickering over him. She knows that no matter what she says, he’s just going to go back out there and pull the same shit next time. She has nothing to bribe him with, nothing to entice him to eat or sleep or _live_ , and Lance feels oddly vindictive.

It used to be Keith in Lance’s position. Used to be Keith who was reckless and well, Keith had Shiro to rein him in, had Lance to nudge him straight.

Lance has no one.

“We need you,” Allura tries one more time, “to have your head on straight, Lance.”

“I do,” he replies.

“I’m serious.” She leans in, holds his hand between hers like he’s glass. It takes all of Lance’s self-control to not recoil. “Okay? Please. We—we can’t lose you, too.”

“I understand, Princess.” He pats her hand and stands. “I’m beat. If you guys need me, I’ll be in my room.”

They watch him go, and nobody points out that his room has remained untouched for weeks.

It’s not what they think. He isn’t fading.

He’s locked in. Locked down. Somewhere deep inside, he _knows_. He knows that if he brushes the cobwebs from his head, if he plugs himself back into the present, if he actually thinks about what he lost, what he can never have in _this_ world yet lucky enough to grasp in others, if he allows himself to _feel_ even an _inch_ of the boiling storm inside—

It’s not what they think. They think he’s depressed. Dissociating. Despondent, inconsolable. He’s not.

What he is, is _fury_ , barely contained.

_“Lance, you got a tail. Two, now.”_

“I see them,” Lance grunts.

He swerves, narrowly dodging a shot from behind. Red responds beautifully when Lance pushes them towards the nearest support ship. He slows down half a notch, eyeing the distance between him and his tails, between him and the ship.

Closer, closer…

_Now._

He jerks Red up. The lion purrs in his mind as they execute a backflip, one more to add the hundreds they’ve pulled off. They go shooting off, back the way they came, just as the fighter jets slam into the side of the ship. Soundless explosions push harmlessly at Red’s hull. Lance rakes a line down the ship with Red’s mouth cannon for good measure.

He doesn’t wait for the ship to detonate, flying off to body-check a fighter hounding Shiro.

_“Thanks,”_ Shiro pants over comms.

Lance doesn’t respond, already moving onto the next enemy.

Shoot. Dive. Twist and claw through five, six, seven enemies. Draw incisions into hulls with a mouth cannon, a tail cannon, with the Galra’s own fighter jet clamped in Red’s jaws, its weapon systems glitching and hitting anything Lance points it at. Whatever works.

He tastes copper in his mouth. His tongue flicks over a cut in his lip. Red growls in his head.

Lance yanks at the controls and, using the wing of the fighter jet in Red’s mouth, he spears another in the gut. Red tosses his head and throws the entire mess into the path of another enemy.

“Good boy,” Lance mumbles.

His arms are shaking. They’ve been at this for thirty minutes, give or take. He fights the Galra, and fatigue fights him. His muscles battle against his drive to eliminate the enemy; against Red’s bloodlust. Or maybe that’s his own.

_“What the hell is a rogue Galra faction doing this close to Coalition space?”_ Hunk asks, audibly winded.

_“Desperation is my guess,”_ says Coran. _“A certain General Haxok has been screeching for our heads on all broadcast frequencies since he dropped out of warp. He seems…unhinged.”_

_“It’s just him? No other fleet waiting beyond to trap us the moment we let down our guards?”_

_“Scanners detect no other presences nearby, except for a Coalition force stationed back on Vyr’ki. They’re ready to relieve you anytime, by the way.”_

“No need,” says Lance. He lines up his shot, downs three enemies with a flick of Red’s tail. “I can do this all day.”

_“I can’t,”_ Allura grits out. _“Blue’s taken heavy fire; I’m going to need to pull back.”_

Shiro curses. _“No Voltron then.”_

_“No, unfortunately.”_

_“It’s fine, enemy numbers are dwindling anyway. We can swap out with the Vyr’ki crew for a breather.”_

“I’ll stay,” Lance volunteers. “Help them out.”

_“No, we’re all pulling back,”_ Shiro asserts. _“Coran, how long does the crew think they can hold Haxok off for? We only need a little while for Pidge to look Blue over.”_

Lance frowns. “Shiro, I’ve seen the crew’s equipment. They won’t last a minute out here alone. You need to let me back them up.”

_“Negative, Lance. We can’t afford for you to get hurt.”_

“I’m the least likely to be injured here. Red’s more durable than the entire Vry’ki fleet put together.”

Red rumbles in agreement. Lance gets him to crush another jet in his mouth.

_“Shiro,”_ Coran interjects, _“Captain Rih says half their fleet was grounded for maintenance, to prepare for the parts we were bringing, but she thinks she can give the Galra the run around for twenty minutes at the most.”_

_“Roger that. You heard him, Lance. Twenty minutes, and then you can let loose.”_

“But I—”

_“Back to the castle, Lance. I mean it.”_

Lance flicks off his comms. Irritation buzzes in his head, loud and growing.

“This is bullshit,” he mutters. “Captain Rih’s going to take losses from this, but Shiro won’t—god, weren’t we just talking about diminished rebel forces a while ago?”

Red growls.

“We could’ve totally finished this,” Lance agrees, but directs Red towards the castle.

The Galra warship hovers at the edges of the battlefield. He scowls at the sight of it. The remains of its shield flicker in disconnected pieces around the bridge and the engines. Half of its weapons array is sparking, telltale signs of Black’s jawblade ripped into the metal.

“The guy only has _one_ battlecruiser, and it’s almost done for. What’s the point of retreating behind people who would be a glorified meat shield?” Red hisses as Lance dodges a drifting jet, his handling of the controls a little too rough. “Sorry, buddy, I just—look at that thing! One hit to its engines and it’ll go down. We don’t need even Voltron for that, a single lion could—”

Lance blinks. “Huh.”

He slows, wheeling around. He stares out the viewscreen, only distantly aware of Yellow and Green flying past.

The cruiser floats there, waiting.

A single lion, huh?

Now there’s an idea, he thinks. He licks his lips, fingers flexing on the controls.

A window pops up on his screen. Someone’s trying to reach him. He pauses, fingers hovering over the Accept option.

He swipes it away.

“Hey, Red,” he says, “you thinking what I’m thinking?”

The lion snarls, the sound rippling down Lance’s spine. He needs no other confirmation.

He thrusts the controls forward.

Lance’s back is sore. Being thrown into his seat multiple times has probably liquefied his spine. Tremors wrack his muscles. He thinks he got whiplash sometime between blowing up the cruiser’s first engine and ripping out the third. As for Red, diagnostics show minor scrapes on the lion’s left flank and some unresponsive wiring in one of the paws. But Lance can fix that up in a day or two.

All in all, not any worse than usual.

Not that anyone else thinks so.

“What the hell were you thinking?!” Shiro demands the moment he steps onto the bridge.

Lance squares his shoulders. “That I could still fight. That the time to strike was now, since the enemy was already so weakened. That we could end the battle now and avoid any losses.”

“You disobeyed my direct order, soldier.”

Oh, so they’re doing that now. “All due respect, _sir,_ I wasn’t going to stand aside and let the Vry’ki fleet become cannon fodder.”

Shiro’s gaze is flinty. Lance holds it.

“You went up against a cruiser, Lance. Those things have shields, extra fighters, and more than one weapons array.”

“Half of which we had taken down.”

“Not the point, Lance.”

“Actually, it is,” says Lance, “because that meant we had a damn good chance to take it down. And we did. We’re _safe_ now.”

“Were you or were you not a cadet? Didn’t they teach you what the chain of command is?” Shiro flings out a hand. “You can’t just go running off like that!”

“I didn’t run!” Lance points at him. “You did! The moment Allura reported damage, you turned tail and ran.”

“Lower your hand, cadet,” Shiro says, low.

“Don’t _cadet_ me,” Lance sneers. “You think a cadet could’ve done what I did out there?”

“Lance.” Hunk slips in between them, hand raised. “Shiro, uh, sir. Let’s just all…take a step back, huh? Just cool down for a second.”

Shiro pinches his nose and turns around, coming to a stop by Allura. She puts a hand on his shoulder.

Lance stays right where he is, glaring over Hunk’s broad shoulder.

“You think a Vry’ki pilot,” Lance begins quietly, “exhausted from pulling double shifts and starving because they were on emergency rations, could pilot a ship that’s missing the equipment we _still_ have in our cargo bay—you think a dozen of those pilots could’ve done what I did? That they could be trusted to?”

Hunk gently urges him back. “Dude, don’t.”

But Lance can’t stop. His blood still burns, still slams its way through his veins, a type of anger he can’t quantify. A fury so wild—so painfully familiar, as if they were remnants of another, echoes of a star gone supernova—

He won. He _won_.

So why does he still feel like he lost?

“Were you,” he asks Shiro, “or were you not, a commander? Didn’t they teach you not to send out soldiers who can’t fight?”

Pidge’s mouth drops open. Hunk sucks in a breath. The room goes cold, silent.

“Get out,” says Shiro.

“Whoa now, let’s not—”

“Lance, you’re way out of—”

“Dude, what the hell—”

“We’re all clearly stressed, but—”

Lance raises his voice, “You’re going to run again?”

Shiro spins around, eyes ablaze. “Get. Out,” he spits. “ _Now_.”

Lance leaves, a bitter taste rolling around on his tongue.

The Garrison harped on and on about team dynamics. About working together and building trust. About how you couldn’t survive in the cold deadness of space unless you had a positive working environment, a pseudo-family.

It’s bullshit.

Lance and Shiro are at opposite ends of the castleship at any given moment now. Lance and Shiro don’t speak to each other. Lance and Shiro don’t look at each other, don’t acknowledge each other unless it’s absolutely needed. And it’s perfectly fine. Things go on much in the same way.

And maybe that doesn’t say much about what they were like before.

Liquid slides down his throat. It burns.

Lance lowers the glass, turning it in his hands. He watches the light pass through the turquoise drink, fracturing itself into pieces. The carbonated bubbles look like gems.

“I’m pretty sure that’s alcohol,” Pidge says, leaning on the wall beside him.

He considers her out of the corner of his eye. “Exactly why you can’t have any.”

“You can’t have it either, you know.”

“The prince himself insisted I have some. Seemed like a bad idea to say no.”

She just narrows her eyes at him.

He takes another sip. And another. It makes his eyes water and his chest constrict. And like this, he can pretend the alcohol is the only reason for that.

“I could tell Shiro,” she says finally, an odd note in her voice.

Anger flares in his gut. “Why? So he can hate me for this too?”

“No. He would be _disappointed_ ,” she says, “because instead of coming to us, you’re going for the most predictable solution known to man. Alcohol, really?”

Lance drains the glass. He’s not going to yell at her. A waiter passes by and he snags a piece of whatever they’re carrying around. He stuffs it in his mouth; he can’t say anything he’ll regret if he’s too busy chewing. He wonders where he can get more of that drink.

“Lance, please.” Pidge steps in front of him; he can see the top of her head, her fluffy hair in his peripheral. “ _Please_.”

“Don’t,” he says, a warning.

“I miss him, too.”

“Pidge—”

“And I can’t sleep.” And that’s her fingers around his wrist, tentative. “I keep seeing—”

He rips his arm away, hissing, “I said _don’t—”_

“Hunk won’t stop cooking the same damn dish,” she tells him, eyes bright and wild. “Shiro won’t step foot in the training room. Allura has fainted eight times, overworking herself, and Coran hasn’t said more than five words at a time since Keith—”

He slaps a hand over her mouth. _“Stop.”_

She stares up at him, shaking.

Air whistles through his nose, high and rapid. He looks around; no one’s seemed to notice their arguing. He takes his hand away, only to put it over his face. He leans back against the wall. Closes his eyes.

“I’m not doing this here,” he says lowly. “We’re in the middle of a mission.”

“What does that matter?” she asks, sounding so young that it physically hurts to hear. “What does any of this matter?”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s not like you disagree.”

He drags his hand down his face. Looks at her.

“He’s gone,” she whispers, “and you—sometimes I think you want to follow him.”

Lance does nothing. Says nothing. If he reacts, he’ll give himself away. Pidge watches him like he already has.

“Promise me you won’t drink,” she says. “Not here, not in the castle.”

He smiles, mean. “Where would I even get alcohol out in the middle of space?”

“Lance.”

“Fine. This was a one-time thing. Just curiosity. Won’t happen again.” He pushes off the wall and steps around her. “Twenty minutes until we can leave, Pidge. Try not to make a scene again. It’ll make Coran sad, and apparently you know better than me that he doesn’t need that.”

He locks eyes with the prince across the room, who grins and waves him over. Lance smiles.

To his back, Pidge says, “I miss him, Lance.

“Don’t make me miss you too.”

How long has it been?

Months? Years?

How long is this going to take? How much more does Lance have to endure? There should be an end to this. A resolution. Something. He feels it, in his gut, that this can’t just be it.

It can’t just be that Lance fights and fights and gets hurt and heals, just to fight all over again for a war older than Earth’s recorded history. Wasn’t there a point to all this, before? Lance was sure he had plans, post-war. Something to keep him going, when thinking about saving people selflessly wasn’t enough for those dark nights. A spark, a fire, a warmth—where did it go? When did it die?

He feels frozen. Stuck. Caught between apathy and anger, oscillating from one extreme to the other as he—as he waits. Waits for what, he doesn’t know.

What he does know is that, although this doesn’t feel like grieving, it doesn’t feel much like living, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, hovering over your prone body as you cry: [ay g’mornin’ kanye](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKWcnNR1zkw)  
> you: shut the fuck up


	2. the descent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: I know nothing about audio signals, radio waves, signaling, modulation, radar signal characteristics, the propagation of sound as mechanical vibration waves of pressure and displacement, or any other field relating to sound technology. I am simply a dumbass with a bare understanding of Wikipedia. Thank you.

_A Galra slaver ship is en route to Nhuir._

_Keith is standing by the edge of a chasm._

_“Hey, what’s up, man?” asks Lance._

_“…There’s something down there.” Keith crosses his arms, curling in on himself. He looks over his shoulder at Lance. Something about his expression pings an alarm in the back of Lance’s mind. “Do you hear it?”_

_Lance steps up beside him, peering into the gloom. Nothing pops out at him. Nothing calls out to him. As he scans, a fog starts to roll in. Or maybe it rolls up. Maybe it’s always been there, hiding in the dark, and he just couldn’t see it._

_The chasm fills Lance’s gut with stones. The hair at his nape is standing on end. He can’t see the bottom of this thing; it’s unnatural. How deep does it go?_

_“I think…I think I need to check it out,” says Keith._

_Lance frowns. “You can’t be serious. Down there? Dude, that’s the start of every sci-fi horror.”_

_Keith bites his lip. “I can’t explain it. Just—I have this feeling.”_

_“Yeah. It’s called fear.”_

_But Keith doesn’t laugh. He would, usually, just a soft little snort. Instead, he keeps his eyes fixed downwards. The alarm in Lance’s mind rings incessantly._

_“If I asked for something,” Keith says, “would you give it to me?”_

_The wind picks up, grass rustling around their knees. Below them, in the chasm, the wind bounces among the rock, crooning low, as the fog chases itself in circles._

_“What?” asks Lance, preoccupied by the sight._

_“Would you do it?” Keith steps into his space. He’s unreadable, expression inscrutable. “Just like that?”_

_Lance frowns. “I guess? Keith, what’s this about? Are you feeling okay?”_

_But Keith ignores him, nodding to himself. He goes back to staring into the fog, a complicated mix of emotions flickering over his face. Suspicion, longing, confusion._

_Lance reaches for his hand. “Talk to me, K—”_

_The wind dies. Silence falls like a boulder, the grass freezes in place, a snapshot in time, and Lance whirls around, breath caught in his throat as—_

_As the earth folds inwards._

_Keith falls._

_~~Keith always falls always~~ _ ~~always _dies_~~

_Keith is plummeting to a grave, Keith is a victim to a strange gravity, Keith is struggling with his jetpack, and Lance is screaming for him. Lance is too late, too_ slow _. He has to watch Keith descend a hundred, two hundred, five hundred meters and—_

_Right before Lance loses him to the fog, Keith mouths:_

Find me.

Lance gasps awake.

He bolts for the bathroom, hand clapped over his mouth. He falls to his knees before the toilet, gagging, fingers scrabbling against the bowl. His stomach lurches, over and over, but nothing comes out besides spit.

Fuck. Jesus fucking _shit_ , mother _fucker._

When he’s done heaving, done crying silently into the toilet, he washes up. Bent over the sink, water dripping from his nose and from the tips of his hair, he works to get his breathing under control.

That dream had been different.

He could almost mistake it for a memory, if it weren’t for the little things. Those little goddamn things— fucking alternate realities where everything is the same, except the colour of his eyes, the grain of his hair, or the fact that…

But, well. This Lance had failed, too. This Lance had lost, too.

Oddly, it doesn’t make him feel better. He thought it would. Frankly, it sucks just as much.

He rubs his chest, sweat-soaked shirt sticking to his skin. His pain and that other Lance’s—one and the same, multiplied. A feedback loop.

He wraps his trembling fingers around the faucet and turns off the water. He rests his forehead on his fist, watching the water circle the drain.

Around and around and around it goes, quicker and quicker, until the last drop has disappeared into the darkness.

What had that other Keith been talking about? It seemed like he knew something. Like he expected something, dreaded it. It doesn’t make sense. If he knew, why didn’t he run? Why did he let the ground pull him down like a puppet on a string—

A puppet.

Keith’s face flashes in his mind. Other Keith and his Keith—the expression on their faces. Longing, suspicion, fear. Other Keith had said he’d _felt_ something. Fuck—what, like a compulsion?

He shakes his head. “That’s stupid,” he tells the sink.

It is. It’s bullshit. Outlandish. That—there’s no way. He sounds like a conspiracy theorist. He sounds like Keith, talking about caves and energy signals in the desert.

…But that had led to Blue, hadn’t it? That had turned out to be right, hadn’t it?

For the first time in weeks, Lance thinks back to the day Keith fell. He was trying to say something, right before the earthquake. He had been looking down. Had he seen something? Had he known something, too?

That other Keith had said _find me_. That Keith had pointed into the fog, had given his Lance a lead, a heading, a _don’t you dare give up_. Had implied that he wouldn’t be gone—but _waiting._

And if _everything is the same_ , then—then wouldn’t his Keith be waiting, too?

The team would say no, Lance knows.

Pidge would scream _he’s dead dead dead_ at him and act like it doesn’t hurt her to say it just as much as it hurts him to hear it. At this point, they might even bench him for a psych eval. Shiro probably hates him enough now to do it, and Allura would agree because she worries. And god knows Hunk and Coran wouldn’t have the energy to look Lance in the eye, let alone oppose that.

_Why won’t you understand that he’s dead?_ they’d ask.

But how could he?

How could he think that that fire-blooded boy, with obsidian in his hair and eyes, that boy with a knife-sharp wit and a lethal grin—how could he think that a boy like that would ever die?

That’s _Keith_. That’s Lance’s partner _,_ that’s Black’s paladin, that’s the boy that hit the ground running when others expected him to tumble and break. That’s a boy who’s been fighting since he could talk. A boy who’s been wrenching his life out of fate’s hands and shaping reality to _his_ liking.

There isn’t anything in this world that could take down Keith Kogane.

Especially not while Lance is still around.

It’s been weeks, yeah. A dead body would be decomposed by now, yeah. But this is Keith, and this is Lance, and _this_ is the sign that he’s been waiting for.

Lance lifts his head. In the mirror, behind limp brown hair, one blue eye stares back.

_Find me._

A grin slices across his face.

“I will.”

He leaves that night.

Knowing he’ll need the energy, he eats properly for the first time in weeks, bypassing the nutrition packs for the leftovers in the fridge. He’s surprised that it doesn’t taste like straw and dirt anymore. He’s strangely aware of his blood, pumping through his body. His mind has never been clearer.

The flight to Nhuir will be long. Two days, at the least. Red is fast, having a top-of-the-line warp engine even now, ten thousand years later, but Nhuir is in another quadrant. He’s just lucky Voltron hasn’t wormhole’d to a whole other galaxy.

That being said, Lance doesn’t need the team waking up tomorrow and catching up to him.

The bridge is dark when he steps through the doors. The floor lights flicker on, guiding him to his station. There, he kneels down, ripping open the panel and digging his hands into its guts.

He might not be Hunk or Pidge, but he’s been around them long enough to figure out the basics. Like disabling a tracking device, even one as advanced as Red’s. And Lance makes a point to know all about his flight crafts. He did it with cargo ships in the Garrison, he did it with Blue. Red’s not an exception.

Once that’s done, he puts everything back. It gives him more time if it looks like nothing’s been disturbed. As long as they don’t check the surveillance feeds, it’ll be a couple days before they figure out that he’s left; his recent routine’s good for a cover.

Red is fully stocked with nutrition packs, multiple first-aid kits and even a stasis pod, so Lance just suits up and slinks down to the lions.

When he enters the hanger, Red has already stooped down and opened up. His eyes are bright, shining, full of life.

Lance jumps onto the ramp and pauses. He looks over at Black.

“I don’t know why you didn’t go after him,” he says. “But I’m getting him back, and you _better_ not lose him again when I do.”

As Red’s mouth closes behind him, he thinks he hears a soft growl in his mind, one that’s too heavy and deep to be Red or Blue.

He takes it as an agreement.

Seeing Nhuir through his viewscreen both relieves him and pisses him off. The latter for obvious reasons, but the former—irrationally, he feared that Nhuir would have disappeared, would have taken Keith away forever.

The chasm is definitely larger than it was the last time he saw it. The sun is setting. He wonders if Nhuir has entered winter, or the equivalent of it, because it’s so much colder than he remembers. The fog in the chasm has risen higher. It kisses the lip of the abyss.

Lance decides to land Red a couple meters away and make the rest of the journey on foot, in case there’s another earthquake. He straps a medpack to his belt.

The wind whips against his helmet, the sound of it muted to his ears. He glances around. The setting sun hovers over the horizon, bathing the flat land in red.

His feet take him right to edge of the cliff. After all those dreams, the sight of the drop is disgustingly familiar.

The air is bitingly cold when he inhales, the taste of it more metallic than Earth. Eyes closed, he breathes out, slow and steady, feeling the movement of his chest, his shoulders as they relax. He stretches his neck, shakes out his arms.

“Hold on, Keith,” he says. “I’m coming.”

He opens his eyes right as the sun slips underground.

His jetpack bursts to life, launching him up.

As darkness descends, so does he, cutting his engines and diving into the earth.

Within a heartbeat, the fog has swallowed him up.

His visor locks in. His suit switches to the internal oxygen supply and the helmet light flashes on to shine uselessly against the fog. His HUD lights up, calculations and scans flitting across his vision. The further he falls, the less oxygen there is. Vision quality is, obviously, low, and his suit struggles to estimate the distance to the bottom. The numbers keep fluctuating from six kilometers to sixteen _thousand._ That could mean he’d hit the bottom in the next thirty-something seconds or in the next minute, which is kind of an important distinction to make.

Right, okay, he needs to slow this down. His jetpack roars to life. He grits his teeth against the g-force and flips right-side up.

He has no idea what he’s supposed to be looking out for or how to find it, but he’ll figure something out once he gets to the bottom. The temperature is dropping, so he’s pretty sure this thing won’t be hitting lava or anything. Thank god for that.

The fog begins to thin out. His searchlight prods at the darkness as Lance glances around. He should be approaching the bottom soon. He runs a scan for biorhythms; there’s always a chance of predators in hiding.

It’s pitch black when Lance lands. He can’t see the ground and stumbles, the noise echoing through the canyon for a long, long moment. Fuck if that isn’t eerie. He looks around and swallows.

Black. Nothing but pure black, an all-consuming darkness. It’s like he was dropped in a pocket dimension where nothing exists. He feels simultaneously confined and exposed. Like, shit, what’s out there? Realistically he knows there’s probably just more rock, but the emptiness seems to go on forever, into oblivion. A shroud that could hide _anything._ And he would have no way of knowing until it was upon him; his light provides basically fuck-all in terms illuminating anything beyond his immediate vicinity.

He looks down. He can barely see the circle of dirt and rock at his feet. He thinks of the miles and miles of rock walls surrounding him. Of the sky, so far above him. His breath quickens.

He shakes himself. Stop it, there’s no time to panic. Find Keith first. He’s waiting.

“Okay,” Lance exhales. “Alright, where would I be, if I was a missing—possibly kidnapped—twenty-year-old guy with a temper and a bad haircut?”

Biorhythm scans and heat signatures are obviously a dead-end. There aren’t visible tracks to follow and he’s not about to go wandering around blindly. That’s at the top of the list on stupid things you’re not supposed to do.

So, if there’s no visibility and no heat, what about touch? He crouches, fingers to the dirt.

It…it feels like fucking dirt, obviously—what the hell did he expect? His HUD scans the compound, finding oxygen, silicon, aluminium, quartz and trace amounts of magnesium and iron. Nothing unusual there, no biotracks or—or human remains. Fuck, he hates that he had to think that.

Hesitating, he peers into the fog. Should he try knocking on the walls to see if it’s hollow? No. Even if a section of this chasm was hiding a passage, it’d take forever to find that way.

He’s running out of options; all the methods he’d normally use to track are useless in this situation, especially since Keith’s trail has obviously gone cold.

Like hell will Lance give up now, though.

He kneels there, fingers digging into the coarse grains, mind whirring. His eyes slip shut.

_Inhale, exhale._

_Draw your focus inward, empty your mind._

_It’ll come to you._

A hint—in his dreams, maybe? He never questioned why he had them, but Slav would’ve told him to dismiss them if they didn’t hold meaning. There must be something to them. One of them has already led him here, maybe the others will take him further.

In the first dream _~~(the best dream, the luckiest dream, the one to be envied)~~_ , Keith hadn’t gone anywhere near the chasm. In the second and third, however…

_Keith shakes his head. “No, that’s not—you can’t hear it?”_

and

_Keith stares at them, all wide-eyed and sheepish. “R-right. I’m sorry. There was—I thought I heard someone down there.”_

Sound, huh? Only, Lance doesn’t remember hearing anything the day Keith fell. And if he’s remembering correctly, neither did the alternate Lances.

He strains his ears, slowly turning his head. His helmet, cranked up to its highest sensitivity, turns up nothing. Just wind, just grains of dirt shifting over each other. He’s missing something.

How could Keith hear something that nobody else could? What is it about this place spoke to Keith, what about it got under his skin? Why Keith? What does he have that no one else—

Lance’s eyes snap open.

Keith’s half-Galra.

Galra. Galra ears and Galra senses and felines and higher frequencies and _shit, that must be it._ Keith, with his half-Galra genes, must’ve heard something outside of human range.

Heart thudding incessantly against his sternum, Lance taps his vambrace and pulls up his suit systems.

He might not be able to hear it himself, but with gear like this, he could scan for disturbances in frequencies above—twenty kilohertz for humans, was it? How high up of a pitch did cats hear? Sixty kilohertz? Seventy?

He bites his lip. Seventy should be a good enough estimate. If the suit doesn’t find anything, he’ll raise it to eighty.

His suit begins scanning his surroundings, flicking through the frequencies. Typical ambient noises bounce back; wind, his heartbeat, his breathing, interference from the chasm itself.

Just when he thinks it’s a bust, something curious crops up on the scans. It’s faint, but he waits and—yeah, there it is again on the readings. At sixty-eight kilohertz: a blip.

He frowns, squinting at the readings. It’s…it’s slow. Faint. Interspersed with long pauses. If his suit hadn’t caught it when it did, he would’ve missed it entirely.

Honestly, it’s a flimsy lead. But it’s better than nothing.

Fingers flying over the screen, he isolates for it, boosting the suit’s sensitivity range as far as he can. He can’t afford to lose the signal.

Give me a direction, he thinks. Please. _Please_.

His suit points him left. Or what passes as left, in this darkness. It could be leading him right into the wall of the chasm, for all he knows. Or right into the waiting mouth of a predator. Or maybe he’ll end up walking forever.

Lips pursed, he glances between the readings and the void before him, around him. It’s stupid, but he feels like if he moves from here, he’ll be swallowed up and forgotten.

But then Keith’s voice whispers in his mind _(find me)_ and it’s all he needs.

Lance rises and takes the first step into absolute darkness.

_“What do you think you’ll do after all this?”_

_The stars on Olkarion are bright. They stretch across the sky, cluttered like sand on a beach, filling Lance’s vision until he feels too small to contain them all._

_“Hug my family for an entire month,” he replies._

_Keith snorts. “No, I know that. I meant like…are you staying on Earth?”_

_“Where else would I stay?”_

_Keith sits up. Grass clings to his t-shirt and Lance represses the urge to brush it off. “I guess that makes sense. Earth’s where everything is for you.”_

_Lance frowns, rises onto his elbows. “Keith?”_

_“Shiro would stay, probably. He’s got business there.” Keith looks up at the sky. “Pidge and Hunk—I heard them talking, they’ve got all these goals, all these aspirations and ideas. Allura and Coran have obviously got plans for the Coalition. And I’m happy for all of them, you know?”_

_Oh. So that’s where this is going._

_“But I just...” He shrugs. “I don’t know if I can return to that shack in the middle of the desert. And the Blade—it fits better, but it would still be…”_

_Lonely._

_Lance sits up, close enough that their shoulders brush. Keith turns his head, dark eyes unfathomable in the starlight._

_“You could go back to the Garrison. They’re always in need of pilots like you,” Lance says._

_“Like_ us _,” Keith corrects, pulling a small smile out of Lance. “But I don’t know. Besides the flying, I never did well there.”_

_Lance nods. “I get it. Rules and regulations. It’d be too stagnant for you.”_

_“Would you? Stay on with them?”_

_He considers it. Keith waits, patient, as he turns it over carefully in his mind; he wants to give a serious answer to a question this important. It’s not about the Garrison, or even about Earth, really. It’s just Keith, asking if Lance has already made up his mind._

_“No,” he replies. “Disregarding the fact that they’d probably detain me on sight, I was a cadet when we left. I can’t imagine trying to fit back into that, or even being a Commander, if they let me advance that far.”_

_“I see.” Keith chews on his lip, gaze locked onto his clasped hands._

_Lance watches his side-profile, noting the faded little scars, the peach fuzz on his cheeks. Slowly, he puts more of his weight onto Keith, who tenses up then relaxes into the touch._

_“I miss home. I miss my family,” Lance begins, voice soft, “but I’m pretty sure that once I’m back there, I’m just gonna be wishing I was out here again.”_

_Keith pauses. “Really?”_

_“I joined the Garrison for a reason, Keith.” Lance tilts his head back and smiles at the stars. “Look at that. How could I not want to be among that?”_

_When he looks back down, Keith is staring openly at him. There’s a clarity to his expression that wasn’t there before._

_“Yeah,” he whispers. “It’s the same for me.”_

Lance travels for what feels like miles. His legs ache. The soles of his feet pulse with pain.

He would’ve used the jetpack, but with visibility like this, it was more likely that he’d end up hurtling face-first into danger.

At one point, the signal leads him straight to a wall and he spends a whole half hour fruitlessly probing it, before backtracking to discover that the canyon split off earlier and he took the wrong route.

But now, here he is. Granted, he doesn’t know _where_ exactly he is, but a glance at the scans tells him that whatever’s putting out that signal is only a couple meters ahead.

Maybe it’s a hidden Galra base. Or maybe even an enemy that they haven’t encountered yet. Maybe it’s ditch, and Lance will fall right into it only to find a limp body and a suit broadcasting a fading SOS signal.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, shaking his head. “Tone it down, Edgelord. You’re here _because_ you know he’s alive.”

As if to answer his wishes, his foot comes into contact with something that’s very much not dirt or rock. It’s _soft_.

He stops, senses alert. When nothing comes out to attack him, he squats down to investigate.

It…it’s a tendril. But not like from a plant; it’s _fleshy_. A blueish, greyish rope-like thing, wrinkled and glistening with some sort of fluid.

He prods at it with his finger, wrinkling his nose at the squishy sound it makes. He jerks back when it wiggles up his wrist, but a quick shakes dislodges it. His gaze follows it into the black, noting how it flares wider.

He frowns, baffled and uneasy. Is he about to stumble on a giant land squid? Or a parasitic flesh tree with tentacles for roots?

His bayard falls into his hand and forms into a broadsword. Carefully, he makes an incision in the tendril. It doesn’t react much, recoiling slightly, but the liquid seeping out of the cut is definitely blood. Possibly copper-based like the Olkari, going by its greenish hue.

“So we’re dealing with a possible hostile organism,” he concludes, which isn’t a surprise. Keith wouldn’t still be here unless something was keeping him from leaving.

The thought that Lance is the closest he’s ever been to finding Keith in weeks trips his heart into double time. He swallows and creeps forward, sword at the ready.

The tendril at his feet grows into a vine, then into something the size of his thigh, then the size of his torso. More begin to show up, too. From his sides, they emerge out of nowhere, converging in on whatever’s in front of him, until the sheer number of them makes it impossible to avoid stepping on them.

He winces with every squishy step. They move under him, rolling gently against his shin. Some try to grab at him and he callously hacks away it them with his sword.

And then, very suddenly, Lance finds himself staring down a hole.

He nearly falls head-first into it, the slickness under his feet making it impossible to get a foothold in. His arms windmill and he curses, righting himself. Once he’s stable, he cautiously peers down the hole.

The diameter of it is about three or four meters across. The—meaty-tentacle things, they cling to the sides of it, crawling into its depths. Or out, depending on your view. Strangely, there’s a blueish glow emanating deep within. All in all, it looks like something straight out of the Alien movies.

He’s going to have to go down there.

…He should probably leave a hint for the team. In case he doesn’t get out.

He writes a message; containing nothing more than the frequency signal that led him here and the words ‘listen’ and ‘Nhuir.’ He sets it to send if he doesn’t delete it within twenty-four hours.

And then he starts his descent.

He figures it’s safe to use the jetpack in this situation. Frankly, he has no desire to climb down on some slimy tentacles.

His jetpack is so loud in the quiet.

Soon enough, he reaches the end. What he sets foot on is a tunnel made up entirely of those shining, slick tentacles. The whole thing glows a deep blue, the tentacles bulging from the walls and dripping fluid. The passage is fairly large, about the height and width of a subway tunnel.

And it’s _cold._ It’s absolutely freezing, even more so than the bottom of chasm which was already chilly to begin with. He doesn’t know how the slick fluid hasn’t frozen. His suit’s heating is already kicking in and he momentarily gives in, wrapping an arm around his stomach and shivering. Jesus.

The more Lance stands there, staring, the more he begins to realize that it…kind of looks like the inside of an intestine.

He swallows, takes a step. The passage squirms under him. His nails bite into his palms.

About ten meters in, he finds the first body.

An animal. Four-legged, thick-pelted, about the size of a housecat, and frozen solid. Its three eyes are cloudy and encrusted in frost. It looks untouched, unbothered. Like it chose to die here.

But the worst thing—the worst thing about it all, is that it’s been halfway _absorbed_ into the side of the passage. As if it was frozen for preservation and is now slowly being consumed. Who knows how long it’s been like this?

Lance abruptly turns away from it, sickened. He picks up the pace.

It gets worse.

He finds a _Puigan._

One of their allies—blue to the lips, almost fully sunken between the tentacles. Lance stares at their half-eaten face in horror. Their face markings are familiar, they’re from a clan he’s had contact with. He might even have talked to them.

A Coalition report flashes in his mind; a recon mission in this quadrant, assigned a team of Puigan, new to the force but eager, they set out two months ago only to disappear. Puig’s forces are still looking for the ship.

Bile teases the back of Lance’s throat. Cursing lowly, he snaps a picture of them for identification. It’s horrid.

The one after that is a Galra. Lance almost stabs them on instinct. But they’re dead and weaponless, like they just walked right into here and decided to take a nap in some _thing’s_ digestive tract.

And it really is a digestive tract; at this point Lance can’t deny it. Things are beginning to add up to paint a picture he’s not sure he wants to see.

The bodies come faster from that point on.

He finds a couple of bi-pedal aliens he’s never met, a couple more of those small animals, the remaining members of the Puigan recon team—but the rest are almost all exclusively _Galra._

Dozens of them, in varying states of absorption. He’s mystified by the number of them until he sees a face he remembers nearly losing a finger to.

He fought this Galra. He traded blows with those hands, can even feel the phantom force of them against his own now. He remembers leaving this Galra bound and gagged, unconscious, _on the deck of the Galra slaver ship,_ all those weeks ago.

The ship that disappeared during the quake.

_“Nothing?” asks Coran. “Truly?”_

_“Not a thing,” Allura whispers. “Even the wreckage of the battle—all of it, everything—gone.”_

Lance looks around, gaze roving over the bodies. He stops at the sight of Olkari-made cuffs, still locked tight around a Galra’s wrists. The same cuffs that sit in a container in Red’s cargo hold, with a dozen others, distributed just last week by the Coalition.

And not five feet from it: a torn sheet of metal. The mark of Black’s jawblade on it plain as day under his headlight.

His gaze wanders further; discarded blasters, a part of a jet’s engine, a pilot’s seat.

_A Galra slaver ship is en route to Nhuir._

_“It’s a dead planet,” says Coran._

_“Why would the Galra decide to colonize a dead planet?”_

_The slaver ship slams into the planet and detonates._

_“It’s so loud,” Keith says to himself._

_“It’s down there.”_

_“Can’t you hear it?”_

“Fuck,” Lance breathes.

The Puigans, the Galra; the _housecat-like_ animals; the unidentified aliens with _fangs and triangular ears and tails_ ; the high frequency signal; the sinister, grabby tentacles; and a dead planet with a tunnel that looks like the inside of a large organism—

Nhuir isn’t a dead planet.

Nhuir isn’t _even a planet—_ it’s an alien organism.

And it’s been emitting a siren call to attract certain aliens to feed on.

Lance’s head is spinning. He wonders if this is how deep-sea divers felt, finding shipwrecks on the ocean floor. Do they feel all the weight of the ocean upon them in that moment like him? Do the hairs on their neck stand up like his? Do they feel suddenly, undeniably minuscule? Do they feel like something is watching them, like he does?

Shit, the reason why that alternate reality Coran couldn’t find any life signs was probably because Nhuir itself is an entire life sign. One that swallowed up everything else, that _hid_ anything else in _cryosleep_ _temperatures,_ made it all undetectable to scanners that would’ve never known to compensate for that. Fuck. _Fuck._

He breaks into a run.

Some of these bodies have already been absorbed. Keith was taken around the same time as them.

There is no way in hell Lance is letting him get _eaten_.

As if they hear his thoughts, the tentacles begin to move _._

They peel away from the walls and out from under his feet. His jetpack engages, hurtling him down the passage, as tentacles chase after him. They grab at his ankles, throw themselves at his head like a bludgeon, shoot out from the shadows like arrows. He dodges and slashes and shakes them all off, snarling.

But there, just ahead, bright red armor like a lighthouse in the dark.

Lance narrows his eyes, a plan forming in his mind, even as his heart shatters into a million pieces and reforms in under a second, stronger than it was, because _he was right._ He was _fucking right._

Keith isn’t dead.

Lance barrel rolls over a tentacle and runs his sword through another, dousing himself in green blood.

In ten seconds, he’s going to reach Keith’s position. He’s going to have to quickly hack him out of the passage’s hold; no time for a safe extraction. Not with these hentai pieces of shit hounding him like this. Damn, he’ll have to fight his way back through them. It wouldn’t be a good idea to go further in and just hope for another exit. They’d probably end up at a dead end. Or in the stomach.

He pushes himself faster, trying to outrun the tentacles, the whine of his jetpack like a scream.

He eyes the distance between them. Twelve feet. Ten. Eight. Six.

At five feet, Lance reduces the jetpack’s speed enough to just stay airborne, plunges his sword into the wall of tentacles to slow himself down and when the flat of his blade slices past Keith’s helmet, he cuts the engine, drops down, and pulls his sword in an arc to slash through the rest of the tentacles around Keith.

Gravity pulls Keith out of the mess and into Lance’s waiting arms.

The weight of him hits Lance all at once, physically and mentally. Lance is _winded_. This is real. Keith is _real._ For a moment, tears prick at Lance’s eyes.

Then the tentacles try to suck Keith back in, and Lance is furious, all over again.

He chops them up, wasting precious seconds and getting green blood all over him and Keith even more, but he can’t help it. This thing almost took Keith away from him. If he could blow this entire planet-organism up, he would, he—

Something flashes in his peripheral.

He turns. And goes still.

A pile of wreckage: sheets of metal, wires, piping. But that’s not what’s catches his eye.

Fuel cells. Hydrogen fuel cells, two of them, just sitting there.

Huh. That could work. It won’t be very big, but it’ll help clear the way. He checks the oxygen level. It’s lower than he’d like, but fuck, he’ll take it.

He drops to his knees, Keith clutched to his side. The cells are too big for him to comfortably carry both. He picks one at random, pulling it out of the wreckage.

Then he hauls Keith over his shoulder, arm around his waist. He straps his bayard away and tucks the fuel cell under his other arm.

He turns and faces the tentacles slithering towards him.

“Okay,” he exhales. “Let’s do this.”

Teeth bared; he flies forward.

He has his work cut out for him, weaving in and out, barely skimming past the tentacles. They almost nab him a couple times. The number of tentacles grow and the passage shrinks, but Lance waits, teeth gritted, until the last possible moment. Until he’s as close to the exit as he can get, until he sees the first Puigan.

Now.

He hurls the fuel cell forward, directly into a cluster of tentacles, then grabs his plasma rifle, lines up his shot and _fires_. It’s dead-on.

The hydrogen ignites.

The explosion rips through the tentacles, its fire like a flashbang, small but quick and brutal. The things recoil and Lance is surprised to see that the fire has spread. Whatever the fluid those tentacles are covered in is apparently flammable, because the small fire is licking its way through the passage.

Not what he expected but he won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

He flies through the hole created. Past the Puigan, past the cat-like animal and up the hole. Around them, the tentacles are rioting, spasming. They don’t seem to be reacting to him, but to the fire inside the passage. It’s probably a bit painful. Good.

The ascent through the chasm’s pitch-black darkness takes significantly longer with Keith’s weight, and it feels like it takes way too long to reach the point where there’s enough light again to see the fog.

But then fog gives way to clear sky and finally— _finally,_ they rocket out of the canyon.

The sky is dark, but it’s nothing compared to the chasm. It’s so blue, deep and shining with stars. Plentiful like the sand on beaches.

Lance makes a beeline for Red, whose mouth is already open, stance ready for take off. He grins wildly. Shit, that’s one good lion.

“Take us out, buddy!” He shouts when the jaws close up after him. Red roars, and a second later Lance is stumbling under the force of Red’s takeoff.

He pulls Keith back against his chest and sits down right where he is, panting. Just a moment. He just needs…

A shudder rocks through him. It doesn’t stop. Soon, he’s full-blown shaking like a leaf. He gapes wordlessly at the floor, arms trembling around Keith. The feeling of Keith’s body pressing into him—

He slams his eyes shut, overwhelmed beyond understanding. Head falling to Keith shoulder, he gasps, breath whistling out of him uncontrollably.

It punches into him, all at once:

He did it.

He fucking did it.

_They made it out._

A whine leaves him, high and delirious, and he feels his mouth stretch into a wide grin, even as tears leak out from under his lids. It’s too much, god, it’s so _much_ —the relief, the gratefulness, the euphoria and the—the terror.

He came so close to losing. He really, genuinely could’ve lost Keith, could’ve ended up living the rest of his stupid life without him.

But now he won’t have to, and his body is shaking itself apart with the knowledge.

“Fuck,” he wheezes. “What the _fuck.”_

All those weeks of holding himself back, of denying and arguing—it’s finally taking a toll on him. Because now that everything’s going to be okay, now there’s nothing left to fight, Lance is left with no choice but to finally, actually, come to terms with everything that’s happened.

And he does. He lets himself crumble to pieces, crying silently into Keith’s cold shoulder, rocking back and forth.

He’s not sure how long he stays like that, but he’s brought back to reality when Red rumbles gently in his head.

The floor lights leading to the small medbay flash at him. Right, he’s got to treat Keith before anything else.

He pulls a stasis capsule out of his medpack and attaches it to Keith’s chest. He taps it and it expands, transparent interlocking plates unraveling over Keith and clicking together until he’s encased in the pod. The hover mechanisms whirr, lifting Keith out of his arms.

Lance guides the stasis pod through Red’s tight corridors. They reach the medbay and he gently lays Keith onto a bed. The pod automatically attaches and adapts to the bed, starting up a scan and beginning to monitor vitals.

Lance casts a critical eye over Keith. Jetpack’s confirmed to be a bust. If Keith has any fractures or broken bones, Lance can’t tell. He does note the bump in Keith’s head. That’s what worries him the most. An untreated concussion could spell major problems and he has no way of knowing if the cryosleep exacerbated that.

Red’s medbay can’t do much for him here, but the pod can keep an eye on Keith until Lance can get them back onto the castleship for a proper cryosleep wake up.

Plan solidified, Lance allows his gaze to settle on Keith’s face.

He looks just like he remembers.

Dark lashes; expressive eyebrows, even in his sleep. A faded scar on his temple, peeking out from under his hair. His cheekbones and his nose and his chapped lips and the permanent wrinkle at the corners of his eyes—it’s exactly how Lance remembers it.

His jaw aches, looking at Keith. He grits his teeth, blinks back more tears. If eyes could hunger for things, this is what it would feel like. Lance finds that he can’t look away.

“Red, can you take care of things from here?” he murmurs. “Take us home?”

Red’s presence brushes over his mind, warm as always but uncharacteristically soft. _Yes. Rest._

Lance seats himself in the bed next to Keith’s and settles in to watch his chest rise and fall.

Rise, and fall.

Rise.

Fall.

Rise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “ **Katabasis** in Greek Mythology is the epic convention of the hero's trip into the underworld. The hero journeys to the land of the dead and returns, often with a quest-object or a loved one, or with heightened knowledge.”
> 
> No I did not plan the fic around that idea. It just happened that I remembered the prefect name for this fic and I’d like to thank not only god but jesus for lining things up like that for me. amen
> 
> Fun fact, the unidentified species that got sucked into Nhuir along with the puigs and galra were the Feryter, aka the cat people from TNAHP. Alternate universes, rmbr? Yes that technically means this au happens parallel to tnahp. Yes that also technically means lance could’ve had a dream were he saw soulmates!klance completely dodging the Nhuir bullshit bc they’re telepathically linked and Lance is able to stop Keith from listening to the siren call shit.


	3. the ascent

The team meets Lance halfway.

It turns out he forgot about his timed message.

Coupled with the fact that they had been bombarding Red with return messages, that were received but were left unread since Lance was down in the medbay, they had thought the worst. That he’d been kidnapped or taken or disappeared just like Keith, leaving nothing but his lion behind.

Their faces when he walks out into the lion’s hanger with Keith beside him in a hoverbed is one Lance will remember forever.

Not because he feels vindicated. In fact, all of his lingering resentment has vanished. Clarity has taken its place; he’s had some time to think, and he knows that whatever they said to each other in these weeks were products of grief. He won’t hold it against them, and they won’t hold it against him.

No, the reason he’ll remember this, is because when the team lays eyes on Keith, Lance sees shock, disbelief, and finally _hope_ spark to life in their eyes.

He’ll remember, because Shiro takes a stumbling step forward and chokes out—

_“Keith?”_

And _that_ , is how Lance is a witness to the exact moment where everything snaps back together.

Keith is estimated to be in the castle’s healing pod for two weeks. Easing him out of cryosleep isn’t the issue; it’s healing the damage and restoring his bodily functions that takes time. Honestly, Lance is surprised it’s only two weeks. On Earth, it would’ve taken that same amount of time just to defrost him safely.

Over that time, they all take turns sitting vigil, for no other reason than to stare at Keith like the weirdos they are. And to let it sink it: the fact that he’s really alive, that he’ll be walking and talking soon, barring any complications.

On the first day, Shiro seeks him out.

He doesn’t say anything, just walks straight up to Lance and pulls him into the tightest, warmest hug.

Lance immediately tears up and throws his arms around Shiro. He hides his face against his shoulder and _clings,_ feeling Shiro do the same. It’s like those first few minutes in Red again. Everything’s going to be okay, and that’s too much. The realization is too good it’s almost scary.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro whispers. “Those words I said, and how I avoided you—I was just—”

“Worried,” Lance supplies. “I know, I know, I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean what I said. I was—”

“Angry,” Shiro finishes. “Yeah, I know.”

Lance’s laugh is weak and wet. Shiro squeezes him.

“Thank you,” he says. “For finding him. For bringing my brother back. I should’ve believed you.”

Lance shakes his head, pats Shiro’s back. “It’s okay. I know now that I came off kind of unhealthily obsessed.”

“I’m glad you’re okay, Lance.” Shiro draws back, holding onto Lance’s shoulders. His face is unapologetically wet. “We thought you’d…”

A wry smile pulls at Lance’s lip. “Gone off and gotten myself killed?”

Shiro flicks his nose. “Don’t even joke. I was going to drag you back here by your ear, you infant. But yes. We were worried. Next time, please consider our feelings when you leave a cryptic message like that again. Better yet, think about taking us _with_ you next time.”

Lance rubs his nose. “Alright, alright, _mom.”_

Shiro ruffles his hair. “I mean it. We’ll do better to listen to you, okay? You’re part of this team, too. You can call the shots sometimes, even, Mr. Right Hand Man.”

He searches Shiro’s eyes and finds nothing but sincerity. He nods. “Thanks, Shiro.”

Shiro hooks his arm around Lance shoulder. “Anytime, Lance. Now, let’s go bother Hunk into baking something for us.”

“As if he hasn’t already filled up the kitchen with all of Keith’s favourites.”

Pidge approaches him next.

“You made me so worried!” she pokes his chest. She’s scowling something fierce, but her eyes shine suspiciously. “I’m glad you’re okay!”

Lance stares down at her, a cleaning rag in one hand and a bottle of disinfectant in the other. He sets them down beside the healing pod he was cleaning.

“Do you want a hug?” he asks.

“Shut up,” she hisses, and dives into his arms.

He rests his chin atop her head and closes his eyes, rubbing a hand over her back as she both curses him out, apologizes, and thanks him multiple times.

When she lets go, he carefully does not acknowledge the snot on his shirt.

Pidge wipes her face on her sleeves and looks over her shoulder at Keith’s pod. She looks back at Lance and says, “I really am glad you’re both alright. The both of you better not do that to me again.”

He smiles, fond. “We’ll do our best, Pidge.”

She nods. “Good.”

Hunk nabs him at night. Pulls Lance into his room and cuddles Lance until the both of them are crying and lobbing soaked tissues into the bin at the foot of the bed.

“I made so much food that we’re running out of supplies and Coran is scheduling for a pit stop soon,” Hunk admits. His voice is nasally, his eyes bloodshot, but he’s wearing a real, honest smile, for the first time in forever. “I can’t help it, I’m just—all these emotions, you know?”

“Oh, I know.” Lance sniffs. “Did you blow anything up recently, too?”

Hunk laughs, sheepish. “Hah, yeah. I just got so into it because now I can finally work on that upgrade Keith asked me about without bursting into tears.”

Lance falls onto him, palms pressed to his eyes. “Aw Hunk, stop, you’re gonna make me cry again, shit.”

 _That_ makes Hunk’s lip wobble and then they’re back at it again, sniffling and hiccuping into each other’s shoulders until early morning.

Lance is the one to approach Coran, actually.

He’s heading to the bridge to check if Pidge has undone the mess of his station and pauses when he catches sight of Coran sitting on the edge of Allura’s dais.

It’s a reversal of the time Coran found him during the party, all those months ago.

“Coran?” he calls.

Coran turns, catching sight of him lingering at the doors. He waves him in. “What are you doing, standing there?”

Lance takes a seat beside him. “What are _you_ doing, sitting here?”

“Just finished a video call with the other leaders of our Coalition,” he replies. He stares out the viewscreens, gaze distant. “Updated them on the situation. Edited some documents.”

He looks at Lance from the corner of his eye.

“Oh,” says Lance. “How’d they take it?”

“They were happy. Joyous, even. Relieved. Some that he knew well broke into tears a bit. Even Kolivan looked less murderous than usual.”

“What I would’ve given to see that,” Lance laughs.

“I want to apologize, Lance,” Coran says abruptly. “When we lost Keith, I gave up too quickly. I’ve gotten used to loss, but I should’ve known how capable of the extraordinary you all are.”

Lance shakes his head. “You don’t have to apologize. You weren’t wrong, trying to help us come to terms with it like you did. Coran, you’ve lived longer than me, you know more than me, and just because I was stubborn enough to prove even death wrong this one time, doesn’t mean your knowledge, your advice, and your help wasn’t appreciated.”

In any other situation, with any other person, maybe Lance would’ve listened to _love and let go_.

But this was Keith, and nobody could stop Lance doing whatever he wanted, when it came to Keith.

“You were trying your best to look out for us,” he continues. “And to be honest, we needed it. I know I…I was never really dealing with it in a healthy way.”

Coran regards him silently. He sighs, clapping Lance on the shoulder. “Regardless, I understand that our actions made you feel like no one was in your corner, Lance.”

Lance knocks their boots together. “How about let’s just all agree to do our best to communicate from here on out? We’ve got a second chance, I say we grab it and refuse to let go.”

That pulls a hearty laugh from Coran, a sound this castleship has been missing. “You’re never wrong, Lance! I agree whole-heartedly.”

He stands, brushes off his uniform, and extends a hand to Lance. His eyes twinkle.

Lance grins and grabs on.

When Allura falls into step with him on the way to breakfast, he says, “We’re good, right?”

She tilts her head. “I was going to ask you that.”

He shrugs. “Like I said to the others, you haven’t done anything wrong. Really, the only people who fought were me and Shiro and we worked that out already.”

She hums. “Then, in that case, I’ll just say I’m grateful for what you’ve done, and for the fact that my family is safe and whole again.”

Lance groans. “Jeez, Allura, you can’t just say stuff like that. Fine, c’mon, bring it in.”

He opens his arms and she wraps herself around him, heaving him up into a hug that leaves his toes dangling off of the floor. He sighs. He feels like Longcat every time she does this.

She drops him back on the ground, smiling brightly. “We’re alright, then?”

Lance links their arms together and starts walking. “Yes, Princess. We’re alright.”

The day Keith wakes up, they’re ready for him.

When the pod door disintegrates, Hunk is there to catch him in a thick blanket. When he opens his bleary eyes, Shiro’s the one to laugh and rub the gunk from them. Then, when Keith opens his mouth and yawns, Allura politely pops three breath mints on his tongue. Pidge makes him down a bottle of water while Coran ushers them to the lounge room.

When the team step through the doors, Lance is waiting by the couch, placing the last of the snacks down.

Keith looks around, blinking slowly.

The couch cushions have been rearranged on the floor, in the middle of the couches like a nest. Blankets and pillows and strange alien furs cover the entirety of it. Plates of food, snacks and drinks are situated on the cushion-less couches, as there is no room for tables or trays. A holoscreen is already loaded up with multiple shows.

Keith takes it all in and says, “Is it somebody’s birthday? Did I forget?”

His voice is barely more than a croak, his hair’s a bird’s nest, and he’s being held up by Shiro and Hunk on either side of him. He looks awful.

But the puzzlement on his face, the cock of his head—it hits Lance like a battlecruiser that Keith is _moving_ , is _talking_ and it’s the stuff of Lance’s literal dreams, it’s—god, it’s _amazing_ , so much so that Lance’s knee-jerk response is to laugh.

Laugh, joyously.

Loudly, freely. The vines around his heart snap and he’s lurching forward and throwing himself at Keith, at his friends, who yelp and scramble to stand under the onslaught.

He’s laughing, because he hasn’t heard Keith’s voice in weeks and it’s even better than he remembers and he’s grinning because everyone else is tearing up and he knows they’re thinking the same thing and in the midst of it all is Keith, gently bewildered, but letting them tug him around like a teddy bear.

“God, Keith,” he breathes. “It’s good to have you back.”

Keith holds up a hand. “Stop. Hold—hold on. I was almost _digested?”_

“You don’t remember?”

“I remember falling, my jetpack—” He frowns. “Hey, what _was_ it with my jetpack?”

“Wiring came loose,” Hunk explains. “I fixed it right up. It should even have a stronger boost now, actually.”

“Oh, thanks. Right, so faulty jetpack, falling. I hit something and blacked out and—well, I kind of remembering walking somewhere, but it’s all fuzzy. And then the next thing I know I’m waking up here. That’s it. You’re telling me a _planet_ tried to eat me?”

Lance nods, cutting a slice of apple pie. Or whatever fruit this is that comes close enough to an apple. “You and every feline-looking species out there, man. Galra, Puigan—that reminds me, Coran, I need to update you on something—even like, alien housecats. Anything that can hear its siren call—it just pulls you in apparently.”

“I…” Keith twists the blanket in his hands. “On the cliff, I did think I heard something. I was going to suggest checking it out together. It sounded like someone was calling for help.”

Pidge purses her lips. “Yeah, that’s not creepy at all.”

“But how did you figure this all out?” Keith asks, brows furrowed.

Lance hands him the pie. “It’s going to sound silly, but I’d like to remind you that this is what lead me right to you, and also Shiro agrees with me, which is revolutionary, considering that means he’s technically agreeing with Slav.”

“Okay?”

“I had dreams,” he states. “Glimpses of a couple alternate universes where this situation plays out, but with different endings. First it was just—depressing, especially once Slav confirmed that they were real and basically what we could’ve had if we’d been a second early—but there were hints in each of them that didn’t click until I saw what was down there and realized what was happening.

“In one dream, we couldn’t find life signs on the planet. When I was down there, temperatures were sub-zero and everything was cryogenically frozen, right, and the only thing truly living was the planet-creature itself. The scanners couldn’t pick up life forms on something that _already_ was a life form, one that was making everything else play dead, to boot.

“Also, the—us, in that reality, couldn’t figure out why the Galra would settle on a seemingly dead planet, but now, I think the slaver ship, both in this reality and the others, were actually responding to the planet’s call. I don’t think they meant to go there in the first place. You remember how our fight with the Galra went down right? They were so disorganized, distracted.

“And the reason I found you, is that some of the Keiths in those dreams kept mentioning hearing something. One of them—the one that made me set out to find you—he even hinted to his Lance that something was going to happen, right before he was swallowed by the exact same earthquake. He told his Lance to find him, because something was wrong. And it made me think about what you might’ve been trying to tell be before you fell, and that’s when I knew you weren’t dead.”

Lance finishes his explanation and looks up to see not only Keith’s wide eyes and pink face, but the smug expressions of the rest of his friends. “What?”

Shiro leans around Keith, smirking. “ _His_ Lance?”

Warmth bursts onto Lance’s cheeks. “I—I just meant—ugh, shut up. You know what I meant.”

“Suuuure.”

He throws a pillow in Shiro’s face.

Keith clears his throat. “What do you think gave you those dreams?”

“Honestly, not sure. But I’m not going to question it. It got us here and that’s all that matters to me.”

Keith nods, nibbling on his pie. “So…to you guys, I was really dead, huh? For a while.”

The team exchange looks, mood shifting.

“To me, it just feels like it’s been a couple minutes since I last saw you all,” Keith continues. “I can’t imagine how it’s been like for you guys. What you’ve had to deal with.”

Allura reaches across the space made of pillows and shared body heat to hold Keith’s hand in hers. “If you’re feeling guilty, don’t. Our pain was not your fault, but that of a creature who managed to snare you in a moment of chance. What matters is that you’re here now. What matters is that we’re together again.”

Keith meets their eyes, one by one. He smiles, small but fond. “I won’t hold it against you guys if you feel like clinging for a couple days.”

“Oh thank god,” says Hunk, “Because if I don’t get a physical reminder of your existence every five minutes, I’m going to go insane.”

The room bursts into laughter, a play-fight breaking out as Hunk grabs at Keith and Pidge fights him for it and then they’re all getting involved and food is flying and Coran is pulling himself out of the way to film it all.

It is, quite literally, the best day of their lives.

In the middle of the night, huddled under blankets and lying on lumpy cushions among five other sleeping bodies, Lance tells Keith that he knows what he’s going to do.

Keith’s eyes peer questioningly at him over the edge of his blanket. It’s cute. Lance is so _happy_ that he gets to witness something like this now, and forever, if he has something to say about it.

Which he does.

“Do about what?” Keith’s voice is a whisper.

Lance tucks his hand under his head. “You know when you asked me what my plans were after the war? I figured it out.”

“Oh. What is it?”

Carefully, he reaches across the space between them and twines their fingers together.

Keith stares at them. He meets Lance’s eyes.

“I only want one thing after the war,” Lance confesses, “and that’s to go wherever you go.”

The flush is slow to rise on Keith’s face and in the darkness, it would be impossible to make out, if Lance wasn’t looking as close as he was. “Are you—that…you know what that sounds like, right?”

“Do you?”

Keith bites his lip. “The day I fell, I was planning on asking you to stay on with me. To travel the stars with me, for however long you wanted. I just wanted you near. I can’t believe you beat me to it, you jerk.”

Lance grins widely, ecstatically. “I would’ve said yes, obviously. I’ve been gone on you for a while, you know.”

Kith buries his burning face in his pillow. It’s so cute, _he’s_ so cute.

Cute and alive and breathing and all Lance’s, now. Lance’s _now_ —his _present_ —and Lance’s future, too, it seems.

“Can I kiss you?” he murmurs.

One purple eye opens and glares at him. It’d be intimidating if not for the red face it belonged to. “Unbelievable,” Keith mutters. “How can you just— _yes,_ you can k—kiss—just get _over here—”_

Lance does, smothering his laugh in a soft kiss against chapped lips. Keith’s breath hitches, nails digging into the back of Lance’s palm. Warmth pools into his chest.

It’s not perfect, but he doesn’t want perfect. He wants real, and it is. Everything about this is undeniably real. Everything is crystal clear, from the pinpricks of pain from Keith’s nails to the lump of the cushions pushing his spine out of alignment, all of it—real, real, _real._

They break apart but Keith doesn’t move far. His nose brushes against Lance’s, their knees knocking together.

They fall asleep, just like that.

That night, Lance doesn’t dream once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand that’s it!
> 
> Hope you liked your gift, evy, please feel free to come crying and yelling at me in our chat I whole-heartedly welcome it
> 
> That goes for all of you readers too, don’t hold back, really tell me how that shit hurted in the comments hell yeah!!!
> 
> Thanks for reading, love you all!! 💖💖💖
> 
> (come bother me over on [my tumblr](https://hiuythn.tumblr.com/) or on [my twitter](https://twitter.com/hiuythn)!)
> 
> [art!!! for this fic!!!](https://ariatays.tumblr.com/post/614527375766667264/keith-falls-keith-is-plummeting-to-a-grave) look at lance's expression holy crap 💖💖💖


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